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I still haven’t seen it. That’s not surprising considering I have two children, aged two and under, a huge pile of laundry and a ton of work to get done. When you add in the fact that I don’t normally hit the theaters for movies as I would rather sit on my couch and talk at will while watching movies, well, it’s just really the opposite of surprising. However, others around the blogosphere have seen it including those who are touched by adoption in various ways.
And what are they saying? Obviously, each person is having their own personal experience. Reviews are going to be mixed. But unlike any move I’ve heard about recently, this one is creating some passionate posts on the topics involved.
Quite frankly, this post out of Peter’s Cross Station (written by an awesome adoptive mom) speaks volumes. (Warning: the post contains spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Without giving anything about the movie here on this blog, I think this quote is something people should keep in mind.
If you knew nothing about adoption going into the film, you’d learn that adoption is sweet and birth mothers have no issues. If you had fairly mainstream knowledge of adoption, you’d leave with nothing new. But if you know about adoption from any part of its the insides, you might well judge, like me, that it does a terrible disservice to the field.
Hmm. Something mainstream doing a disservice to the field? You don’t say! Who would have guessed it?! And while the movie is fictional and, as such, we shouldn’t put too much credence in what it says or how it portrays the act of placement, I can’t help but wonder a few things.
What if a movie totally downplayed the emotional trauma that 9/11 widows went through after losing their spouses? What if a movie totally dismissed the grief and loss a mother experiences after a miscarriage? What if a movie poked fun at our soldiers who are dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? People would be up in arms! They’d be angry. They’d be demanding that the movie be pulled and the writers be hanged.
But, except for a few intelligent voices like quoted above, no one in the “real world” seems to be too upset about the misrepresentation of birth parent grief and loss. Why is this?
Because birth mothers deserve what they got, dontcha know? They went out. They had sex before they were, gasp, married. They got knocked up. They would have made a poor parent. They would have abused their children. They would have neglected their child while they shot up in the bathroom. They aren’t to be trusted, respected or helped.
That’s how America views birth parent grief and loss. This movie is doing nothing to change those views. And while every movie on the planet isn’t made with the intent to foster change and inspire reform, totally downplaying someone’s loss is just basically not cool. Other groups of people wouldn’t stand for it.
So why do I have to?
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For more on Juno, read these posts.
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Photo Credit.
Hi Jenna,
This is my own little review that I wrote about this movie after seeing it last Saturday.
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Although Juno is a fictional movie out of Hollywood and not a documentary, people having no real life experience with adoption only know what they learn through the media. Fiction or nonfiction, comedy or tragedy, Juno is not an exception in its potential to influence public opinion.
The main character has a likeable persona, but when it comes to the relationship between herself and her unborn baby, screenwriter Diablo Cody creates a total disconnect, altogether ignoring the mother-child bond that forms in utero and which, whether consciously or deeply repressed, lives on.
Cody’s Juno refers to her baby as “this thing,” requests a closed adoption and chooses not to see the baby again after the birth, even though this runs counter to modern adoption practice. There are few barriers to such post-adoption contact between biological relatives now. The birth father comes to the hospital, but he too chooses not to see his baby. The underlying idea is that avoid contact and you avoid the pain of attachment. Not even a good-bye is scripted.
Skipping right from an abortion decision to an adoption decision, an idea borrowed from the “Adoption not Abortion” crowd, further disregards the transformative process of pregnancy; and the fact that people, emotions, and circumstances are not static over time. That circumstances will not change is something that a large segment of infant adoption adoption proponents count on to increase the number of babies available for adoption, as it can prematurely and effectively lock an expectant mother into an adoption plan.
The movie allows for a brief acknowledgement of grief — Juno cries quiet tears alone in her hospital bed, while the baby lies alone in his nursery crib — the saddest visual of the movie (I cried here). Then Juno goes home, quickly returning to normal life in a scene where she is cheerily playing guitar with her best friend — things now seeming back to the way they were “before.”
Under ordinary circumstances, detached behavior between a mother and her baby is considered pathological — behavior that sometimes occurs in mothers with psychological problems or emotional damage stemming from a history of severe abuse, abandonment or other childhood or domestic traumas.
But such a disconnect can also stem from illness in the surrounding culture — in this case, American culture. Juno’s circumstances are not considered “normal” as they are not what is considered optimal in our culture. Meticulous planning, timing and circumstances are increasingly exclusively what is thought of as the norm in this society.
Juno — was preconditioned to shut down and disconnect, since hers are not “optimal” conditions.
This so-called “win-win solution” for sub-optimal circumstances requires a premature (pre-birth) decision. This leaves no room for the persons most directly affected to change and grow, in effect, stifling the situation from evolving in a more natural or unhurried way.
Cody, a 29-year-old woman, got a lot wrong in terms of best practices in contemporary adoption, which call for more openness. However, she does indeed show the picture that many in North America — where sealed records still exist and closed adoptions are preferred by many adoptive parents — want to see: adoption facilitated by a “clean-break.”
Is this movie so powerful that permanent life-altering decisions will be made based on the examples provided? One can only wonder, but with such an appealing (hip, smart, thoughtful) young character, some of what was set forth in this movie just might influence some young people who find themselves in a similar situation.
Mary Ellen
I saw this last weekend, too. I’ll write up my thoughts, but I agree with what both of you are saying. The disconnect portrayed between mother and unborn child really, really bothered me. No counseling, no acknowledgment of her impending loss … Juno’s experience was not well-represented either. I’ll post a blog next week.
Wow. I can see why you were bothered by the synapsis of that movie. I haven’t seen it yet. Prehaps if I didn’t know what I know now it wouldn’t bother me as much. My friend has probably seen it by now, I’ll point this out to her, mainstream Americans don’t understand about a lot of adoption issues and symplify it too much, which is not good, as we need to learn as much as possible from each angle.