by Helen Jacey
ROLE CHOICES
Juno identifies, consciously or unconsciously, mainly with the role choices of heroine, lover, mother, and dependant. What kind of heroine is Juno? At first she’s a Questing Heroine, on a mission to lose her virginity with Paulie Bleeker. As soon as she finds out she is pregnant, she becomes both an Incomplete Heroine, having cut herself off from Paulie, and a Questing Heroine, in her effort to find the right adoptive parents for her unborn child. At school and elsewhere, she’s an Outsider, being pregnant so young.
The mother role choice is at the heart of Juno, as all the female characters identify with this role choice in different ways. Juno is a pregnant teenager, a soon-to-be mom. She consciously wants to be a good mother, not by keeping the baby, because she knows instinctively she’s neither old enough nor desirous to give up her youth. The best she can do for her baby is find the right parents. Vanessa aspires to be the perfect, idealized mother but can’t get pregnant. Juno consciously decides that together, Mark and Vanessa are the perfect parents. She is ambivalent toward the control-freak side of Vanessa, initially preferring Mark, who is more fun and easy going. As a child, and still a dependant who has little responsibility, Mark is more available to her. However, Vanessa’s desire for motherhood is so strong that Juno comes to realize that Vanessa will be a brilliant mother for her child on an emotional level. It is not just for surface reasons, such as affluence and a perfect home.
When it comes to Paulie Bleeker, Juno identifies mainly with the Believer role choice, as a Lover and Rival. Her feelings for Paulie lead to her pregnancy and then make her reject him. Projecting her rejection as him dumping her, she becomes the Rival to a female classmate.
STORY TYPE, THEME, AND METAPHORIC WOUND OF JUNO
Juno’s Story Type
Rites of Passage is the dominant story type because so many things in her story are a first for Juno. She’s found her first love, lost her virginity, is pregnant for the first time, and giving her child up to adoption. These are all major life events. These Rites of Passages will not propel Juno into adulthood, but they will enable her to learn more responsibility, to herself and others.
The Theme of Juno
“Your true family are the people who are there for you.” Juno’s underlying message is that no matter whether they are blood relatives or not, the people who form your true family are those who don’t let you down and who let you in. Juno is not let down by her father Mac and her stepmom Bren. They are there for her on every level. Vanessa does not let Juno down and proves herself, unlike Mark, to be the true parent of Juno’s unborn baby. As a lover, Paulie Bleeker never lets Juno down either. Brenda is Juno’s true mother and helps her practically and emotionally through the pregnancy. Like a true mother, she tolerates Juno’s adolescent testing of her and knows her weaknesses.
Juno’s Metaphoric Wound Is Parental Loss
Remember, you use the Wounds and Gifts Principles to discover a Metaphoric Wound. Juno’s Internal Wound is the abandonment by her own mother. This hurts Juno, and she is very upfront about it, rubbishing the cacti her mother sends her (that she hasn’t thrown away, significantly).
Juno’s Internal Gift is her verbal dexterity as a form of defensiveness. This is how she has learnt to cope with pain. Although jokes and banter do form a kind of emotional currency in Juno’s home environment, Juno uses them to make herself cool and aloof, in the way teenagers like to give themselves status. It is also the quality about her that makes Mark start to fall in love with her, exposing his relationship with Vanessa as very weak.
Juno’s External Wound, her major problem in the story, is being pregnant at sixteen, going through a painful process of being seen as different to her peers, giving birth, and giving up her child. Her External Gift is love with Paulie Bleeker. He is her Gift because he is the right guy for her. He is nice, caring, and supportive. For instance, he is the only person at school who doesn’t make her feel fat and ugly. He is always pleased to see her and desperate for the relationship.
Juno eventually has to sacrifice her Internal Gift so that she can regain closeness with Paulie after she has pushed him away. Being the right guy for her, who adores her and never wanted to be pushed away, he can’t deal with her defensive mixed messages. He is a slightly hapless sixteen-year-old, who has never coped with anything as major as being a father, but only wants to do his best as he feels equally responsible. As Juno rejects him, he feels he has to back off if that is what she really wants. This is what her defensive big mouth seems to be implying! Juno has to learn that being emotionally open is the only way to be reunited with Paulie.
Juno’s Internal Wound, her loss of her mother, is healed by Juno becoming a mother herself and giving up her child to a better family, to Vanessa, who will be a single mom. Just like Juno’s own mother gave her up by leaving her with the better “real” family of her father and stepmom, Juno is going to do the same thing with her child. Although at the beginning Juno wanted to give her child parents who will never break up, she has to learn that this is a childlike fantasy. By repeating her mother’s abandonment in another form, Juno learns that abandonment can lead to a happy family after all. This heals her Internal Wound and heals the Metaphoric Wound of the story.
PHASES
Identity Phases
By getting pregnant, the Transition phase runs all the way through Juno’s story. Everything changes as fast as Juno’s body does: her family’s priorities in helping her, school friends’ attitudes to her, feelings toward Paulie, and feelings toward herself. Being so young, Juno is not psychologically prepared for the Transition. She’s on a roller coaster of conscious and unconscious reactions, her own and others, to her changing state, and it is only toward the end of the story she takes control.
Juno’s Maternal Lessons are complex and result in Juno feeling more ambivalent about women than men. Maternal Lessons are also an underlying phase throughout the story, because although Juno is consciously doing her best to be the opposite of her mother, she is unconsciously repeating her Maternal Lessons. She wants to be a good mom to her child. Her mother’s abandonment has taught her that mothers aren’t the best parents. The closest she has to a mother/daughter relationship is with her stepmom. Bren has her own daughter, Juno’s half-sister, but she doesn’t really differentiate in her attitude between the two girls. She refers to Juno as “my kid.” In this way, Juno’s attitudes to women are ambivalent. They have taught her that the nonbiological mother can be better than your own. This is why she finally trusts Vanessa as a single mom to adopt her child.
Juno doesn’t have much experience with Father Distance as her own father brought her up. Accordingly, she turns to men for love and emotional support. She basically trusts men, because her own father wasn’t very distant at all and is a hands-on Nurturer. Her first experience with Father Distance is through Mark, the prospective adopter of Juno’s baby. Juno bonds with Mark and seeks him out for support on her own. Having rejected Paulie, she begins to innocently flirt with Mark. When Mark finally tells Juno he’s walking out on Vanessa and getting his own fat so they can have a relationship, it destroys Juno’s illusion that men are the good guys. Juno realizes that if he can abandon Vanessa, he can abandon the baby. This is her first real experience with Father Distance and male abandonment of the family unit.
Relating Phases
Desire for Union, in the form of losing her virginity with Paulie, is the inciting incident of Juno’s story, immediately propelling her on the massive Transition of pregnancy. Juno Self-Relegates when she rejects Paulie. Instead of letting him show her love, she has low self-esteem issues brought on by getting huge, and her unconscious fear of repeating her own mother’s patterns. Pregnancy forms a long Retreat for Juno, as she slowly becomes an Outsider in her school life and integrates into the Lorings household by turning to Mark for support. This is her misguided Desire for Union with Mark. Although consciously he is an idealized father for her child, she also wants to appear attractive to him. For in
stance, she puts on makeup before visiting him. At school, Juno has an Eruption with Paulie when she accuses him of fancying someone else. He angrily counters that he should be angry with her.
After Juno gives birth, she Retreats inwardly. She doesn’t want to see the baby, because she and Paulie agree he is Vanessa’s. Juno is supported in the painful postnatal state of Transition back to her old self by her father and Paulie, who both give her tender emotional support in the hospital. At the same time, Bren gives Vanessa a Maternal Lesson in the form of moral support and tells her she looks like any other new mum: “scared shitless.”
Momentum Phases
When she first discovers she is pregnant, Juno stands at the Crossroads of her future life. If she has the baby, life will change forever. If she has an abortion, it’s all over. She eventually chooses a different Path to Potential, adoption. This leads her into the home of the Lorings. When Mark eventually tells Juno he has fallen for her and wants to leave Vanessa, Juno feels slightly violated by the fact that he sees her sexually, despite her own unconscious collusion with this. Juno has to witness the Eruption between Mark and Vanessa when they break up. Juno fees from their home, her illusions in shatters. Later, she sits in the car, at another metaphoric Crossroads, working out a new option. Taking a Path to Potential, she drives back to the Loring’s home and leaves Vanessa the note. I’m in if you’re in. She has healed her negative Maternal Lessons and now realizes a good enough family is the person or the people who remain constant, as Vanessa has for the baby. Juno now takes the Path to Potential by going back to Paulie to express her real feelings for him. Juno feels the Desire for Union by filling his mailbox with Tic-Tacs and finding him in the sports field to open up to him. In front of all their school friends, they kiss and make up. In the final scene, Juno rides her bike on a Path to Potential back to Paulie’s house. They are together again, their Desire for Union with one another ultimately fulfilled.
LAYERS OF CONFLICT
Internal
Juno’s pregnancy is a catalyst for her to unconsciously resolve her internal wound of abandonment by her mother.
Significant Other
Juno’s confused feelings about herself during her pregnancy make her push Paulie away. Their youth makes them unable to cope with the pregnancy as a couple. Eventually Paulie takes another girl to the prom because Juno told him to. He didn’t realize she was unconsciously testing him. By failing the test, Juno turns on him and turns to Mark. Her involvement with Mark leads to huge disappointment when Juno discovers he fancies her. He has overidentified with her youthfulness, and it has made him realize how wrong he and Vanessa are. His decision to leave Vanessa causes Juno huge angst.
Family
Juno’s main source of family Conflict resides with her feelings about her mother. Vanessa and Mark’s relationship problems mean they will be unable to ever create a loving family. This hurts Vanessa and Juno for completely different reasons.
Community
The Women’s Clinic is an unpleasant and cynical place. Its atmosphere makes Juno unconsciously realize that her baby symbolizes far more to her than she realized. She cannot go through with the abortion. As a teenage mom, the voice of disapproval comes from the ultrasound nurse, who suggests Juno would be an inadequate mother. At school, the staff views her with disapproval as well. Juno becomes an outcast, the larger she gets. Only her true friends stand by her.
Culture
Juno’s loving family helps her avoid stigma at home about being pregnant. She otherwise lives in a culture that is disapproving of teenage parents. Juno’s sense of responsibility to her unborn child represents an Amazonian defiance of the hypocrisy in society that suggests that teenagers are inadequate parents.
Psychodynamics in Juno’s Relationships
Juno has a tendency to project her self-anger as anger. Because she is pushing Paulie away, she projects this as him wanting to take another girl to the prom. Like all people on the receiving end of projection, Paulie is confused by this and eventually explodes.
Juno denies her need to flirt with Mark. She is aggressive toward Brenda when she tells Juno not to go the Loring’s home when Vanessa isn’t there, saying Brenda doesn’t understand friendship. When Mark tells her that he has feeling for her, she is angry with him. These instances reveal Juno’s denial of her role in breaking the Lorings up and kill her fantasy projection that they are the happy family she has always wanted.
LAYERS OF UNION
Internal
Juno is a pretty happy teenager, content with life until she gets pregnant. She’s confident and assertive, someone who expresses herself just how she wants. She has no major inhibitions or hang-ups.
Significant Other
Juno has intense happiness with Paulie at the beginning of her story, as they take each other’s virginity on a chair. She later finds peace and a sense of soul mate with Mark, until she gets to know why he is so fun to be with — he has never grown up! Later, she reunites with Paulie. They’ve survived a huge test, and it hasn’t dented their relationship.
Family
Juno is close to her father, who she adores and turns to for emotional support. Although not so close to Bren, she definitely relies on her as a practical and reliable mother. She lets Bren handle her pregnancy, just like a mother.
Community
Juno is at home in her community of the school, her friends, and her family. She can joke about her pregnancy tests with the local shopkeeper, for instance. Contraception and abortion services are readily accessible. Although she doesn’t take advantage of these, she derives some humor from them.
Culture
Juno’s culture allows her to be a normal teenager, with a great deal of freedom to do and act as she pleases. She feels equal.
World
When Mark gives Juno a Japanese magazine with a pregnant superhero, it helps Juno see herself positively by having an image from another culture. Juno also tells Mark that her father named her after the “mean” Roman Goddess Juno, giving another mythic dimension to the story.
FILMOGRAPHY
FILMS
(** Recommended Viewing)
The Accused (U.S./Canada/1988)**
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (U.S./1974)
Aliens (U.S., U.K./1986)**
All About My Mother (Spain, France/1999)**
A Ma Soeur! (France, Italy/2001)**
Amelia (U.S., Canada/2009)
An Education (U.K./2009)**
A Question of Silence (Netherlands/1982)
At Five in the Afternoon (Iran, France/2003)**
Australia (Australia, U.S./2008)
Avatar (U.S, U.K./2009)**
Away from Her (Canada/2006)
Babette’s Feast (Denmark/1987)
Baby Mama (U.S./2008)
Bagdad Café (West Germany, U.S./1987)
Bend It Like Beckham (U.K., Germany, U.S./2002)
Boys Don’t Cry (U.S./1999)**
The Brave One (U.S., Australia/2007)
Brick Lane (U.K., India/2007)**
Bride Wars (U.S./2009)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (U.K., Ireland, France/2001)**
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (U.K., France, Germany, Ireland, U.S./2004)
Brief Encounter (U.K./1945)
Bright Star (U.K., Australia, France/2009)
Burn After Reading (U.S., U.K., France/2008)
Calendar Girls (U.K., U.S./2003)**
Central Station (Brazil, France/1998)**
Changeling (U.S./2008)
Cheri (U.K., France, Germany/2009)
Chicago (U.S., Germany/2002)
Chloe (U.S., Canada, France/2009)**
Chocolat (U.K., U.S./2000)**
The Circle (Iran, Italy, Switzerland, 2000)**
Citizen Kane (U.S./1941)
Cold Mountain (U.S./2003)**
Confessions of a Shopaholic (U.S./2009)
Cracks (U.K., Ireland/2009)
Curse of the Golden Flower (Hong Kong, Ch
ina/2006)**
The Departed (U.S., Hong Kong/2006)
The Descent (U.K./2005)**
The Devil Wears Prada (U.S./2006)**
Down with Love (U.S., Germany/2003)
The Duchess (U.K., Italy, France/2008)
Earth (India, Canada/1998)**
East Is East (U.K./1999)
The Edge of Love (U.K./2008)
L’enfer (France, Italy, Belgium, Japan/2005)**
The English Patient (U.S., U.K./1996)**
Erin Brockovich (U.S./2000)**
Female Agents (France/2008)**
Fire (India, Canada/1996)**
Fly Away Home (U.S./1996)
Freedom Writers (Germany, U.S./2007)**
Frida (U.S., Canada, Mexico/2002)**
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania/2007)**
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden, 2009)
Girl, Interrupted (Germany, U.S./1999)
Gone with the Wind (U.S./1939)**
Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (U.S./1988)
Gothika (U.S./2003)**
The Handmaid’s Tale (U.S., Germany/1990)
Heading South (France, Canada/2005)
He’s Just Not That Into You (U.S., Germany, the Netherlands/2009)**
Hideous Kinky (U.K., France/1998)**
Hilary and Jackie (U.K./1998)
The Holiday (U.S./2006)**
The Hours (U.S., U.K./2002)**
Huit Femmes (France, Italy/2002)
I Love You, Man (U.S./2009)
In Her Shoes (U.S., Germany/2005)**
