Juno, and other stuff to worry about

[janestarz]

Though I am unsure whether it is wise to go into detail and worry about the message a movie might make, it is interesting to take a step back and observe what are things that people worry about.
This all was brought on by the lack of D&D yesterday. We popped on a movie, Juno, which many of my friends really liked.

While I don't watch movies like Not another teen movie, I also realised just now that I can't for the life of me think that people take American Pie seriously. Though it is entertaining to many, it hardly comes to mind that people might think of the characters from that movie might be rolemodels to today's youth.

Though Juno was entertaining and had humour -- the quips and jokes were funny and witty -- I was shocked at the overall concept of the movie. Here's a sixteen year old girl, who gets herself knocked up, can't stand to face an abortion, decides to put up the baby for adoption even despite the fact that the adoptive parents' marriage falls apart....and everyone is okay with it.

Whatever happened to being hormonal? When you're pregnant, your entire body changes, you're as large as a whale, you have to pee all the time and the last trimester is supposedly hell because you're getting really tired of it all. Not Juno, she just breezes on through. The only thing that bothers her is the fact that the boy she likes takes a different girl to the prom after she encourages him to do so.

I'm scared that this movie gives off the image that having (unprotected) sex at sixteen is a-okay, that if you do get knocked up it's really nothing to worry about, that you can always get rid of the baby, and that it's fine to dump a newly-born into a broken marriage.

This in contrast to the view on teenage pregnancy from Dangerous Minds[imdb]:

Carla: "But, Louanne, once these girls have babies, very few of them come back to school anyway."
Louanne: "I see. So you make them think they have to leave. You just push 'em out a little earlier, make it a little harder, make it a little more hopeless."
Carla: "I do what I have to do because it is dangerous to have a pregnant girl in a classroom. It's not a warning, Louanne. I-lt's prestige, it's stardom, it's attention. You know, not all these girls become pregnant by accident. Pregnancy is contagious."
From: Dangerous Minds, 1995

Well, what am I worrying about. I am scared to death of being pregnant because I don't want to have any children. It's been that way for most of my life - it just never entered into the equasion and I'd probably be a bad mother anyway. And Juno was entertaining.

So, what should I be worried about? Ads with my name on it? [Slashdot]. Who becomes the next president of the United States? The differences between nationalities and countries?

At first, I thought this would just be a rant about Juno, but it is really more interesting to think about the different things people worry about. Did you know, there's this guy who wrote an essay [Slashdot] on his typewriter in 1978 about how to charge interest for goods that move at nearly the speed of light for interstellar commerce?

Comments

[watzalikzeggen.livejournal.com]

Ik had inderdaad een beetje hetzelfde ongemakkelijke gevoel bij die film. Juno is zonder meer een charmante film, met als grootste pluspunt dat de personages van sympathie bijna uit elkaar barsten: de kracht van vooral het hoofdpersonage is juist dát ze zo leuk en weerbaar is, waardoor ze met veel gevat sarcasme, maar zonder al te veel andere problemen, door haar hele zwangerschapscrisis heenzeilt.

Maar inderdaad, als niemand ergens écht een probleem ziet, heb je geen film en eigenlijk ook geen goed scenario, maar blijft er wel een twijfelachtige boodschap achter. Maar goed, meer hype dan echt Oscarwaardig denk ik zelf ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Totally agree with you on the Juno and scared-to-get-pregnant points.
I didn't like the 'oh, I'm pregnant but what the heck, in the movie it only took 2 hours and then the baby was gone' idea it gives. The soundtrack was nice though.
Ellen Page is quite scary in the movie 'Hard Candy' (sounds like a porn movie, but it really isn't).

~Brenda~

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

The reason people start to feel old is not that they realise it's been ten years since they were that age. The reason they feel old is because their vision of how stuff works is so much different from that of those adolescents.

Nice to see you around here!

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

I couldn't watch American Pie either (or Dude, where's my car, for that matter) without thinking: this is ridiculous, this is not how it works in real life. This is not what people would really do.

There are however people who breeze through their pregnancy. I have seen colleagues and friends who actually liked being pregnant. Now I share your fear, I have visions from the first Alien movie whenever I think about something growing inside me. I absolutely despise being sick, so not looking forward to having that feeling every morning. I don't like my emotional instability as it is, can't imagine what life would be like if more female hormones made it even worse. But I see women who just walk around, their belly a little bigger than usually, content, smiling whenever they feel the little one kick. They choose hideous names and go to the hospital to just pop the baby out in a few hours. It's possible, apparently...

It's one of the things I worry about too. I have no doubts about my capabilities as a mother, but I'd rather not be pregnant...

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

I see people in the train every day who are like that. For example: when I was waiting for the train I sat down next to a boy who was busy reading in a book, using a pen to underline parts. His friend walked up to him and said. "Hey, nigga. Are you doing homework? Dude, niggers don't do homework!" (and I'm not making this up, they used the n-word themselves).

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

I guess I prefer to delude myself that normal people are... well... normal.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is that 'normal' doesn't exist, and anyone who thinks of themselves as normal are also quite 'unique' and that we as roleplayers will easily be excluded from the 'normal' group.

The current issue of News Hour on BBC World says that one in four American teenage girls suffer from an STD. Live streaming here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour.shtml), but during the air time (13.00 to 14.00 CET) of the programme itself it won't start at the beginning. After two pm, it will be available from the beginning. I'm listening to it right now.

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

You have inspired a post. Stay tuned.