Been a while... again...
Although I have yet another Schindler's List post frying on the pan, I thought of posting some quick observations about Jason Reitman's 2007 Juno.
As I was recently re-watching this cute film (bit-by-bit on my Sony Elm while riding the metro to/from work... if you'll pardon the shameless product-placement for a bit of atmospheric set up), it occured to me I should try a new method of blogging - BlitzBlog.
That is, rather than thinking things through ad nausea and taking ages before I post anything, I should rather sit down for 30mins (I am timing this with a stopwatch) and put some words down into html. All of my previous long-winded posts have gained nothing in coherence thanks to my taking longer to think em and write em, so if incoherence is the ultimate and inevitable outcome anyway, I might as well opt for speedy incoherence - this way I'm at least coming to terms with the ideas and putting some thoughts down on paper (I do in fact write drafts on actual paper... another technique to prevent me from senselessly surfing shite for hours before/instead of writing my blog).
So first thing's first - Juno as wish-fulfillment:
1. Juno is wish-fulfillment in that we wish all teenage mothers were this eloquent and articulate.
2. Juno is wish-fulfillment in that we start believing that we are/could be as beautiful and cool as everything we see on the screen (and hear on the excellent soundtrack).
You could say that this is the most fundamental wish-fulfillment of all films and visual images. I.e. in line with Laura Mulvey's mirror-stage thesis in her founding article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", we gain pleasure through looking at the screen, in the same manner that the infant gains pleasure from seeing its own reflection - which necessarily appears to the infant to be more physically coordinated and less anxietized than its own self.
I am tempted to say that the specific pleasure we obtain from watching "films like Juno" - by which I mean highly stylized and aestheticized films, with overwhelmingly "pretty" images and sound, very much like Sofia Coppola's Marie Antionette (or Virgin Suicides and even the more mainstream Lost in Translation), or Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers - goes beyond the general pleasure of watching.
If watching anything gives us pleasure, then what is the specific pleasure we gain from watching beautiful images? Does it not go beyond the mirror-stage? Don't we trespass into the realm of wish-fulfillment here, by wanting to believe that what we see on screen is our reflection, although we know it isn't?
We are in fact in a mirror - that is, opposite - position to that of the the infant's. Unlike the infant, who believes that the reflection is somebody else, we know that the images on screen are somebody else, and yet we would like to believe that they are somehow our own reflection.
Wrap this thought up - yes, it's time to reread Mulvey, that's one thing.
Another thing is, that all these "pretty" images should also be interpreted as regression/representation (thoughts and affects translated into visual images), and they also show us how displacement works in film - the more vivid, "pretty" and worked out the image, the less significance does it carry, the more it tries to distract us from registering the return of the repressed: it gets in our way of noticing the filmic placeholder of the symptom.
Oh yeah, and as far as "pretty" images are concerned, Juno is a perfect example of how language in film (the spoken word in the script) could work as an obfuscating beautiful image. Cos Juno is naught if it isn't late-modern Shakespearian, with all its indie/alternative/goth 'swear to blog' and other cute expressions.
3. Juno is wish-fulfillment in that we would like to hope that the supply and demand of all unplanned pregnancies would always match as perfectly as in this film.
* * *
But I sense that all of the above is still very much on the surface of things... I need to dig deeper. Got to get some acheronta movebo going on here...
In the interest of digging deeper, there are two further moments in the film that I think merit more thought and analysis.
The first is the chief crisis in the film, which surprisingly enough is not Juno's pregnancy, but rather Mark's and Vanessa's impending breakup. To be more exact, the crisis is triggered by Mark telling Juno that he's planning to leave Vanessa (while Mark and Juno slow-dance to a song Mark recalls from his prom... and then Mark spills the beans, mere inches away from potentially heavy petting with the precocious, gravid teen surrogate mother of his child...)
What precisely is at stake here? Why is the otherwise resilient and elevated Juno so devestated by the prospect of the soon-to-be-adoptive couple's breakup?
Just a hunch - Juno's fear of the breakup could consist of her wanting to ensure that the child will not have to face the other's desire as the cause of its being.
HUH?!
OK, so if Mark and Vanessa stay together and adopt the child, then it would live in a believable illusion that it is the product of a necessary and ineluctable relationship, one that leaves no room for desire per se (the parents must be together, they wanted a child and got it, with little or no choice involved).
If the child were ever to find out that it was adopted, then that still would leave very little room for choice - the parents wanted a child and got it.
Mark and Vanessa's breakup necessarily belies the illusion of no-choice/desire-free conception.
The fear of shattering this illusion is a typical obsessive (i.e. predominantly male) anxiety. Which leads me to the question I raise at the end of this post.
I suspect that the trauma or potential trauma behind this aspect of the narrative has something to do with the dissevered parental and/or partner roles of all the protagonists in the film. In other words, disciphering the story behind Juno's strong reaction to the breakup requires a closer examination of how Jason Reitman and Cody Diabolo consistently subvert all hope for any of the protagonists to attain a harmonious family-role position.
What am I talking about again?
It seems as though the filmmaker(s) place a glass prism spank in the middle of the partner/parent/child equation, refracting all the protagonists' beams beyond any hope of a straight path.
A few examples to make this point clearer:
Bleeker - unsuspecting and unintentional biological father of the child, won't/can't be its father socially (will not even see it), at the end of the film a reconciled partner of Juno's
Mac MacGuff - Juno's father (though somewhat MIA father, as he fail to protect her from becoming a highschool mom), not the child's father
Mark - would-be adoptive father of the child, can't be a biological father of it or any other child, eventually chickens out of the adoption/his relationship with Vanessa/his little flirt with Juno
Leah - not a mother to any child, fixated on an impossible semi-imaginary relationship with a teacher
Bren - not Juno's mother, not the child's mother (and what's the thing with wanting to have a dog but not being able to due to Juno's allergy...?)
Vanessa - cannot be a biological mother, does eventually become the child's adoptive mother
And me thinks that this ties into yet another important question - what is the the true gender of the main protagonist? Is Juno really a female?
You could say that this cast of all-but-ideal roles was the result of the filmmakers attempt to write history into the narrative, bringing a taste of our late-modern times, with its diverse family-formation patterns onto the set.
However, I sense that there's more to this than meets the eye.
Why nobody in the film is able to occupy a straightforward partner/parent relationship is one of the core questions critical viewers should confront.
