Juno: Teen Pregnancy or Fight for Women's Rights?

Choice #1
Juno Analysis


Juno is a small film that has made a huge impression on our society. Juno Mac Guff, the main character played by Ellen Page looses her virginity to long time love Paulie Bleeker played by Michael Cera. This unplanned pregnancy not only changes Juno but also as John Fiske would say to his ‘dominant audience,' it was intended to make you think of teenagers as irresponsible and immature (class notes, 2/11/08). Juno is portrayed as a young woman unaware of the world around her, gives birth and after quickly thinking it through she adopts the baby to the Loring family. Who is to say that Juno could not raise the child? Why should she give the baby to a wealthy family? Why not give the child to a same sex couple? These are just some of the big issues this small film raises.

As an audience member, I have generated much opinion about Juno but must step back as a critic to understand the meaning from the film. It is important to look at why the stories sequence of events or lack there of are so critical to the story overall.

First off, the film pushes us to think about teen pregnancy as normal. However, a very young individual like Juno is challenged to face the process alone. Not only is Bleeker not included in the pregnancy but he is obsolete from the serious consequences and responsibilities many adults opt not to conceive, literally! As an audience, we feel sympathy for Juno who has clearly made known she does not understand the ramifications of teen pregnancy even sex. She has no guidance from her family. In addition, this film forces its audience to question sexuality within teens. Many teens may watch the film, learn that Juno had an easy nine months of child bearing and life goes back to ‘normal’ after the baby is delivered. This does not reflect real life!

The dominant ideology of the film pushes the audience to focus on the idea that women can raise children alone. Just as Bleeker left Juno so is the adopted mother Vanessa Loring played by Jennifer Garner abandoned by her husband Mark played by Jason Bateman. The film encourages the dominant audience to think about teens as irresponsible and that only women can nurture the child. Is the director saying that women are a stronger sex? Heck, people have been saying for ages that ‘its take a village to raise a child.’ We must ask ourselves, how can one person bring up a human being?

Juno was left alone from the being of the movie. She encourages the audience to believe that despite society’s consensus that teen pregnancy should be avoided it is not irreversibly and inevitably doomed to destroy a teen’s life. However, I like to see how the adoption of the child from Juno to Vanessa was an example that despite their differences Vanessa is an example of what life could have been like for Juno down the road. Although their social class and age are very different, there are many opportunities within the film that the director offers us to connect Juno with the Loring family. For example, Juno and Mark love the same music and share a passion for the art. However, like Bleeker, Mark abandons the responsibility and opportunity for personal growth of raising a child. Despite their similarities, the film pushes us once more to think that women are the dominant sex, are the only ones who can raise a child but are clearly rewarded in the end.

Throughout the film there are several examples of what I like to call ‘crisis moments’ turning points for the characters. One pivotal moment in the film that raises much debate is the scene where the two women are supporting Juno during her ultrasound. Juno, her step-mom and her friend Leah played by Olivia Thirlby experience a high point of vulnerability at this moment. During the visit, the technician scolds Juno for being a teen mother while her mom refutes back to prove that no culture, race, job, or social status can prove that Juno is irresponsible and cannot take care of the baby. She also raises a point that as a group of women their nurturing bond will help them through this complex but rewarding time in Juno’s life. Like Juno’s mother Bren Mac Guff played by Allison Janney, we learn from author’s like Christensen and Hine that teenagers are responsible and have a voice that needs to be heard.

In Hines piece “The Rise and Fall of The American Teenager” he mentions how the general public tends to lump or generalize that all teens are alike, “What was new about the idea of the teenager at the time the word first appeared during World War II was the assumptions that all young people, regardless of their class, location, or ethnicity, should have essentially the same experience” (Hine, 11). Most people in our society consider the changes, choices and metamorphosis that is ‘adolescence’ to be a “failure” or “falling” instead of “a search for identity” (Hine, 8). However, Hine creates a parallel to the very story of Adam and Eve “when Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of Knowledge, they freed themselves from their benevolent but paternalistic creator, and entered into a life that was more difficult, but recognizably human” (Hine, 8). Like the women in this film, their freedom of choice and responsibility allowed all of civilization to benefit. Whether it is the choice of a tattoo, sexual preference, hair color, social group or academic major the “the social mystique encourages adults to see teenagers (and young people to see themselves) not as individuals but as potential problems” (Hine, 11). This is a period in a person’s life “which most experience big physical, emotional, intellectual, and social changes” (Hine, 15). Hine like Juno illustrates many examples such as bearing a child as a young adult where teens are faced with the challenge of action vs. consequence and impulsiveness vs. rational behavior. Hine expresses that teenagers “are treated as something less than real people” (Hine, 17). We live in a society were these growing adults are suppressed by stereotypes that preceded them.

Christensen like Hine encourages the reader to think about how the mass media and society’s stereotypes which develops our own ideas of ourselves and other people in his piece “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us.” Christensen illustrates most people believe that children and teens are sheltered from reality and learn to develop fallacies of ‘what life is really not like.’ However, Juno demonstrates that teen pregnancy is real and it does not have to be a negative outcome. Society forces us to believe that this will have a negative outcome with negative ideologies.

Christensen like the writer of Juno, Diablo Cody believes we need to “question this accepted knowledge” (Christensen, 127). While there is the implication that teen pregnancy is bad the intension is that much growth and positive outcomes can come from Juno’s situation. Cody, Christensen, Hines, and even Juno herself invites us to see how “we can pierce the surface” of these stereotypes and misconceptions within the world we grow up in and develop our own ideas about culture, race, gender and society (Christensen, 130). Juno reinforces that women are a strong sex and are greatly rewarded for their role as child rearing individuals.

Becoming Hip Hop

Talking Points #4

A Style Nobody can Deal With: Policies, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop
By Tricia Rose

“Hip Hop emerges from complex cultural exchanges and larger social and political conditions of disillusionment and alienation.” (Rose, 412).


After reading Tricia Rose’s A Style Nobody can Deal With: Policies, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip one word that jumps out at me is “cultural expressionism” (Rose, 409). Rose explores this term further throughout the body of her essay. She allows her audience to learn the social, political, emotional and physical aspects of hip-hop and its influence on the African American youth in New York. She invites us to all learn about the social and cultural identity associated with the history of the hip-hop nation.

As a culture all of its own, hip-hop was built from the ground up and is best known to some people today as ‘rap.’ Rose teaches us that these fast rhymes that make us want sing and maybe even “pop and lock” our hips all come from a powerful history of struggle and oppression (Rose, 410). We learn that hip-hop has been passed down from earlier Afro- Caribbean and Afro- American cultures. Their special traditions have built the language, dances and visual traditions that we call ‘hip hop’ today. Rose remarks about the fundamentals of the tradition, “hip hop combines elements of speech and song, of dance and display, to call into being through performance new identities and subject positions” (Rose, 402). The founders of hip-hop emerged with the help of urban inner city youth in New York.

Hip Hop is more than just music it is art, and a voice of a culture. Rose invites the reader to think about the meaning behind the lyrics of their songs. I enjoyed learning how music was their outlet of expressionism. The “themes and styles” born during this time in the 1970s continues on to today’s musicians, “ even as today’s rappers revise and redirect rap music, most understand themselves as working out of a tradition of style, attitude and form which has critical and primary roots in New York City in 1970” (Rose, 403).

I also learned a lot about the social and political history that involved the cultures within the city. Rose teaches us how families of all nationalities were evacuated from their homes due to changes in city policy and a huge push for commercial building. We learn how these families living in urban New York were greatly affected by the economic and social reform, “ urban job opportunity structures, have exacerbated long standing racial and gender based forms of discrimination and have contributed to increasing multinational corporate control of market conditions and national economic health” (Rose, 403).

So what does this all mean? Well, for one Rose allows us to learn that President Fords “dramatic social service cuts were felt most severely in New York’s poorest areas and were part of a larger trend in unequal wealth distribution and were accompanied by a housing crisis which continued well into the 1980” (Rose, 404). Rose teaches us that this huge economic and social reform might have segregated cultures but help to unite youth in Urban America. Inner city youth began to ‘divide and conquer’ authority. Their voice became what we know today as hip-hop. Families who were kicked out of “their houses due to these drastic cuts in city policy began building their own cultural networks” (Rose, 407). The media might have portrayed “these black and Hispanic neighborhoods [as] drained of life, energy and vitality. [However] the message was loud and clear. Like Christensen and Hine, Rose teaches us that these visions of loss and futility became defining characteristics, the youngest generation of South Bronx exiles were building creative and aggressive outlets for expression and identification” (Rose, 407). The youth of the South Bronx “answered back” (Rose, 407). Hip Hop has certainly created its own “tenor and energy” throughout the ages and into today’s music world (Rose, 413). These three authors all reinforce the idea that teenagers can make a voice for themselves and when they speak, we need to listen. We must make their voices known! The vibrant style that we call hip-hop is truly a “cultural expression” that carries with its own voice of struggle and accomplishment (Rose, 409).
Rose’s piece over all was very interesting at that! However, there were various paragraphs were I questioned the context of the point Rose was making due to the vocabulary. Overall, a great read with lots of plentiful information about the ‘becoming of hip hop.’ However, I definitely needed a dictionary near by.

Digital Revolution: Technology Friend or Foe?

Talking Points #3

“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” By Marc Prensky


In this article Prensky explores the idea of new technology taking over the lives of people today. More and more we are finding technology being integrated in our everyday lives and even in the classroom. Prensky believes this digital revolution is taking over as a new methodology of teaching and could possibly be changing the brain development of children today, “what should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N- [for Net] – gen or D- [for digital] – gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky, 1).

Some things I found to be confusing were Prensky’s thoughts of “singularity is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century” (Prensky, 1). I believe he is talking about the major changes of youth today. In sentences surrounding this quote he focuses on the unique ways in which youth talk, communicate, learn and dress which have all changed in today’s day and age. He might be speaking about how this digital age will continue to take over and can never be reversed because the mindset of the youth today has changed so drastically.

Another point that I found to be confusing was his discussion of the CAD’s “Monkey Wrench game” and how the creators wanted the language “to be traditional pedagogical language of learning objective and their goal of the game was to eliminate any language that even smacked education” ( Prensky, 5). Was this game supposed to be relevant to education in any way?

Overall, I feel that Prensky makes a great argument about the new waves of integration of technology and the surge of controversy that has followed. People are questioning its impact of how society thinks, acts and feels today. He makes a good argument about lay people and the changes they will need to make from generations past ways of thinking to today, “today’s older folk were “socialized” differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain” ( Prensky, 2).

Prensky allows the reader to question whether technology is teaching or taunting our society. Will our communication styles as a community begin to dwindle due to texting and email? Prensky states “so what should happen? Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital immigrant educators learn the new?...Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist the old” (Prensky, 3). Going along with this idea he mentions “our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (Prensky,2).

Will technology take over the youth of our nation? Will kids really benefit from faster paced curriculum? Should teachers change their system or stick to methodologies of teaching that were created long before this digital revolution? Prensky asks the reader to question if they think our society should revert back to old ways of teaching or conform to the mainstream society? Prensky even remarks that some parents today seek computer help from their kids.

Prensky also points to “legacy” and “future” types of teaching and learning “my own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content” (Prensky, 4). Should a game teach a child about serious topics like 9/11?

I don’t agree with his ideas of using games to compensate for a teacher teaching students. But he raises a valid point that if students can memorize game characters why can’t they learn content for class, “there is no reason that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokemon characters with all their characters, history and evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 181 nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented” (Prensky, 5). Prensky remarks that if this change were to occur, “digital immigrant educations will have to change” (Prensky, 6).

I believe that technology is taking over not only in the classroom but the way we think, act, learn and communicate with others. Are we properly socializing our youth? Is it changing our society for the better or worst? This article connects to the theme of the image of teens in the media. Prensky like Hine and Christensen note the image of teens changing, and how they speak ‘their new own language.’ As teens are targeted in the media as being the major consumers of technology, Prensky is asking us if we think should society conform to the youth’s new ways.

Mass Media: Friend or Enemy?

Talking Points #2

“Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us” By Linda Christensen


Christensen opens her piece titled “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us” by stating “I want to develop [my students] critical consciousness, but I also hope to move them to action. For some the lesson does not end in the classroom. Many who watched cartoons before we start our study they can no longer enjoy them. Now instead of seeing a bunch of ducks in clothes they see the racism, sexism and violence that swim under the surface of the stories” (Chistensen, 134). Wow! Christensen has empowered students in her classroom to not only question the common stereotypes in our social but to understand and dissect the ways in which viewers like us are subconsciously taught sexism and racism even as far back as preschool. She empowers her students to look at cartoons, movies, and the media that surrounds us and to develop an opinion about it. Once we are able to see the subliminal messages about the portrayal of men, women, looks, racism we can begin to see why society has developed certain beliefs. Christensen invites her students to participate in discussions and write about their opinions on such propaganda in the media and specifically cartoons. One student remarked, “Have you ever seen a black person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a cartoon? Did they have a leading role or were they a servant? What do you think this is doing to your child’s mind?” (Christensen, 331). Chistensen invites every student and reader to take action and let their “writing be a vehicle for change” (Chistensen, 133).

By charting stereotypes within the mass media and within the context of cartoons the students became activists for change. They were no longer able to view a cartoon without pinpointing racial biases and buy a toy without thinking of how sexist or racist it really is.


Christensen like Hine encourages the reader to think about how the mass media and society’s stereotypes develop our own ideas of ourselves and other people. We can begin to understand how terms like “the wicked step mother” and the distorted image of female cartoons not as real people but “play boy centerfolds” (Christensen, 130). Each writer invites us to see how “we can pierce the surface” of these stereotypes and misconceptions within the world we grew up in and develop our own ideas about culture, race, gender and society (Christensen, 130). Christensen and Hine also encourage us to see that as we grow up we straddle the ideas between what our family teaches us as well as the conflicting ideas the mass media displays to us. However, Christensen makes a good point about the power of the mass media “these social blueprints depict the domination of one sex, one race, one class or one country over a weaker counter part.” (Christensen, 126). Children learn to “develop distorted views of people outside of [our own] racial/ cultural group” (Christensen, 126). She also raises another valid point that it can be extremely detrimental a child’s belief system if we do not grow up in a socially diverse community and the media is all that we learn from, “Many of us grow up in neighborhoods where we have limited opportunities to interact with people from our own families.” (Christensen, 126).


This great author invites us all “to see patterns in the media…and learn to decode the underlying assumptions” (Christensen, 127). We must all “unlearn the myths” and empower ourselves to think for ourselves and develop our own beliefs about people, race, gender, and society (Christensen, 127).


Question:
How much has the media really shaped our lives? Looking back to the movies we watch or the cartoons we see what are some of the main cultural stereotypes/ bias that surround us?

Teenagers: Revolutionaries or Rebellions?

Talking Point #1

Title: The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, 1999.

Author: Thomas Hine


“What was new about the idea of the teenager at the time the word first appeared during World War II was the assumptions that all young people, regardless of their class, location, or ethnicity, should have essentially the same experience…” ~ Thomas Hine. (Hine, 11).

Our society today fears teenagers. Rebellious, drunks, crazy, impulsive, wild, promiscuous, immoral, innocent, gangsters, and irresponsible are just some of the terms society has coined to describe teenagers. We as a culture have stereotyped and dissected one of the most critical stages of development in a human beings life. Our culture seems to think they have all the answers. Perhaps a child’s upbringing is the route of their ‘deviance?’ When in reality these misconceptions and generalizations might be cause for teens to act out to defend themselves.

Hine raises several great points surrounding the idea that “the teenager is a symbol of Americans’ rising aspirations, the repository of hopes, the one who will realize the American dream” (Hine, 8). Most people in our society consider the changes, choices and metamorphosis that is ‘adolescence’ to be a “failure” or “falling” instead of “a search for identity” (Hine, 8).
However, Hine creates a parallel to the very story of Adam and Eve “when Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of Knowledge, they freed themselves from their benevolent but paternalistic creator, and entered into a life that was more difficult, but recognizably human” (Hine, 8). Their freedom of choice and responsibility allowed all of civilization to benefit. Whether it is the choice of tattoo, sexual preference, hair color, social group or academic major the “the social mystique encourages adults to see teenagers (and young people to see themselves) not as individuals but as potential problems” (Hine, 11). Hine states that our society’s beliefs about teens “are deeply contradictory. They should become free to become themselves. They are the hope of us all” (Hine, 11).

Hine takes the reader from society’s view into the heart of a teen. This is a period in a person’s life “which most experience big physical, emotional, intellectual, and social changes” (Hine, 15). He illustrates many examples such as bearing a child as a young adult where they are faced with the challenge of action vs. consequence and impulsiveness vs. rational behavior. Hine expresses that teenagers “are treated as something less than real people” (Hine, 17). We live in a society were these growing adults are suppressed by stereotypes that preceded them. They are generalized, and misunderstood! As a culture, we “want them to grow into a healthier, wealthier, and wiser versions of ourselves” (Hine, 20).

In conclusion, Hine taps into the argument of nature vs. nuture. Perhaps their home milieu changes their actions as teenagers. Instead of adults pointing their finger and blaming teens, what a teen’s interdependence on their parents? Hine raises the issue that “young people crave contact with their families” (Hine, 25). The very absence of their role of the parents “engaging in their child’s life helping the teen to set goals” can damper the teen’s drive to aspire for their dreams ( Hine, 25). Hine hits the nail on the head when he states, “the teenage mystique, which encourages parents to treat their young as if they were some strange and exotic species, plays a big role in creating the youthful anomie and deviant youth culture” (Hine, 25). The very absence of a positive role model challenges the growing teenager to grow up on his or her own. The teen will spend more time in peer groups, which could have an even worse affect.

When I was Thirteen...

When I was thirteen, friends, sports, student government, family and volunteering were the key ingredients that made up my life as a growing teen. I was very involved in school always trying something new and ready to meet new people. Nevertheless, this was an awkward time for friends especially girls with social groups and “clicks” slowly emerging. There were the popular people, the nerds, the athletes and debaters. It certainly makes the movie “Mean Girls” come to life! But I frequently wondered, where did I fit in? The search for identity and sense of belonging was hurtful and helpful at times. You realized who your real friends were and more importantly, who you were as a person. However, I do not miss the days when your ‘best friend’could change each week and people judged you by the designer clothes you wear. I would not want to repeat some of those teenage years. ~Bri

Welcome to my Blog!

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my blog. I look forward to sharing stories and hearing your thoughts about the topics we will cover this semester. ~Bri