Hollywood's unplanned baby boom: Waitress, Knocked up, Juno

author : Diana Arens

by Diana Arens

I’m easily annoyed by relative lack of good roles for women in film, and by the scarcity of film written and directed by women. I can’t help but wonder, is it a right-wing pro-life conspiracy, or at least a mass coincidence of manufactured consent, when three films (Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno) appear in one year depicting unwanted pregnancies that end happily in the birth of babies? What does it mean for women when the representation of reproductive choice disappears from the media? I was thinking about these things when I sat down to watch an advance screening of Juno in Seattle in November, with director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) and screenwriter Diablo Cody (Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper; Pussy Ranch blog) in attendance. By my side was Olympia’s Kimya Dawson, mother to sixteen month old daughter Panda Dawson-Duval. Dawson provided the majority of the music for the film Juno. Her voice and her sweet songs about messy emotions are nearly a character in the film, in the way that Jonathan Richman and Tommy Larkins were a part of There’s Something About Mary.

It’s a basic tenet of feminism that the control of women’s sexuality and reproduction is about power. In the film Juno, opening December 14th, the power lies with intelligent and wry high schooler Juno (Ellen Page), from start to finish. Juno instigates a sexual experiment with her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) which results in pregnancy, she investigates procuring a “hasty abortion” at a clinic called Women Now, in a change of heart she finds potential adoptive parents Vanessa and Mark (Jennifer Garner; Jason Bateman) through the Penny Saver, she announces her pregnancy and her plan to her parents and they accept it supportively and without judgment, she develops engaging connections with the potential adoptive parents, and she directs the nature and depth of her relationship with Bleeker. It was relieving to me that I liked Juno so well, for being a film brave enough to have the issue of abortion come into the storyline as an option, considering my irritation with how Waitress and Knocked Up skirted dealing with it nearly entirely.

In Waitress, written by, directed by, and starring Adrienne Shelly, we meet small town diner waitress and pie-baker Jenna (Keri Russell) as she is unpleasantly surprised to find that she is pregnant by her financially controlling and physically abusive husband Earl, whom she intends to leave. Jenna visits her doctor saying, “Well, I seem to be pregnant.” Her doctor effuses, “Good! Good for you! Congratulations!” “Thanks, but I don’t want this baby.” The doctor trails off with, “Well, we don’t perform…” (Don’t perform what? Appendectomies? Tracheotomies?) Jenna quickly says, “No, I’m keeping it. I’m just telling you I’m not so happy about it like everybody else might be.” Why doesn’t Jenna consider the obvious? Is it money? Is abortion not a local option? Her doctor won’t even say the word. The viewer doesn’t get to, or have to, hear the word. Later, her husband Earl says, “I’d tell you to get rid of it but I want you in the same place as me in the hereafter.” Is that a personal religious code Jenna shares? Jenna later describes the baby growing inside her as “an alien and a parasite.” I find myself sad for her that she has resigned herself to her situation.

In Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, Alison (Katherine Heigl) is shocked to find that she gotten pregnant during an alcohol fueled one night stand with Ben (Seth Rogan). Sitting around with his buddies, Ben’s friend Jonah (Jonah Hill) counsels him to, “Take care of it.” His buddy Jay exclaims, “Tell me you don’t want him to get an A word!” Jonah replies, “Yes I do, and I won’t say it for little Baby Ears over there, but it rhymes with shmushmortion.” Again, the audience is treated as though we are too sensitive to have to hear the word, and it is hidden beneath a quick joke. Alison’s consideration of her options extends to a conversation with her uptight mother who also pleads with her to, “Just care of it. Take care of it; move on.” Without explanation, Alison decides to go through with the pregnancy, and Ben is happily on board.

Three films: three unwanted pregnancies, zero abortions, three children born. Two of the films, Waitress, and Knocked Up, won’t even utter the word “abortion.” What does it mean that these two films, which seem like they should deal with options, are conspicuously not using the word “abortion”?

Juno stands out as the one film that presented a woman intelligently considering reproductive options including abortion. Talking to Bleeker, Juno nonchalantly says, “I was thinking I would just nip it in the bud.” We see her call Women Now, the women’s clinic, saying, “I’m just calling to procure a hasty abortion.” There it is, the A bomb said aloud on screen. (As an aside, I am reminded of a prank call record wherein a guy calls a radio evangelist earnestly asking for information on where he can get his girlfriend a “good Christian abortion.” He is eventually dispatched with a dial tone.)

As Juno approaches the abortion clinic she is met by Su Chin, a girl from her high school, holding a sign that says, “No babies like murdering,” while chanting, “All babies want to get borned!” It’s an easy laugh. As Juno walks past her towards the clinic, Su Chin calls out after her to say, “Your baby probably has a beating heart, you know. It can feel pain. And it has fingernails!” Juno presumably knows that the embryo is not yet a baby, because she later describes it as a sea monkey. Yet, she can’t bring herself to go through with the abortion because she becomes aesthetically disturbed in the waiting room by the thought of all of the fingernails around her. One lone protester has changed Juno’s mind. Why?

In considering the option of adoption, Juno’s mother says, “Somebody else is going to find a precious blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation.” Is that what Juno thinks? Did she balk at abortion because of religion? She never says. She thinks about getting an abortion, she could have done it, but she just doesn’t do it.

The Juno screening began with a slightly smarmy smiling man named Warren Etheredge saying, “How many people here are the products of unplanned pregnancies?” Behind us there were a few seats in the small theater reserved for the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. The screening ended with self-congratulatory banter, disguised as a Q&A session, between screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman about how awesome each thought the other was. At the end of a series of noncontroversial questions I asked Cody what her reaction was to the impending glee of fundamentalists over Juno’s choice to not have an abortion, in light of the films Waitress and Knocked Up. “Bleah. I’m pro-choice.” Reitman quickly added, “We didn’t set out to make a political movie,” and talked about how radical it was to have a film that looks at the potential for what a family is, the way his does. Warren Etheredge entered the stage smiling, and loomed over the proceedings to wrap things up. Cody noted that Knocked Up lacked “good lines for women.” Later, offstage, she said, “We thought they [fundamentalists] were going to be pissed. I mean, with the protester out in front of the clinic and everything.” I told her that I thought Juno was different from Waitress and Knocked Up because the women with unwanted pregnancies in the other two films didn’t even consider abortion, that even the suggestion of a choice was absent. Screenwriter Diablo Cody gave Juno all of the control, most of the good lines, and made an undeniably feminist film.

Kimya Dawson noted, “Regardless of the choice that is made by Juno, it is the fact that she has a choice that matters. Choice is still choice if the choice is to keep the baby. If abortion is not even presented as an option, then I would consider it a pro-life film.” Of the female lead, she says, “I like that Juno is a normal, strong girl, and the film is not so much about the social structure of high school. She reminds me of my friends.”

Diana Arens hosts Free Things Are Cool on KAOS Olympia Community Radio, and lives in Olympia.