The Cover Page | Ellen Page, overexposed and underaged on the cover of Maclean’s.
In January, Ellen Page as the swollen-bellied Juno MacGuff graced the cover of Maclean’s. The accompanying headline asked, with somewhat affected concern, “Suddenly Teen Pregnancy Is Cool?” Then, in February, on Barbara Walters’ annual post-Oscar TV special, Miley Cyrus and Ellen Page were pressed to reflect on “girls like Jamie Lynn Spears and Lindsay Lohan.” Page came across as intelligent and well-spoken. Cyrus... well, not so much. Score one for the Canadian school system.
Some say Juno is a funny film that reflects the complexities of teen pregnancy in a refreshing manner. Others complain about its less-than-realistic characters Diablo Cody’s mannered, nobody-talks-like-that dialogue. Whatever. But perhaps it’s more instructive to look at Juno as one of a string of recent comedies centering on the hysterics of the hapless as they flail their way through the hilarious consequences of “oops” pregnancies? Knocked Up, Juno... these films all have an “unfortunate consequences” undercurrent running through them, reaffirming the heterosexual two-parent arrangement as the only “normal” kind of family.
Last night, with hockey pre-empting our boyfriend George Stromboulopoulos, my girlfriend and I seized the opportunity to go see Baby Mama, which puts a distaff spin on the old Odd Couple formula: Tina Fey is a successful executive who desperately wants a baby, so she hires “white trash” surrogate Amy Poehler to bear it for her. Hilarity ensues (and no, I’m not being sarcastic). But even with sly comic talents like Fey and Poehler in the mix, Baby Mama still bends over backwards to reconfigure all its characters into “appropriate” family units, essentially reiterating what appropriate parents look and act like. (I’ll give you a hint: they don’t smoke pot or attend high school.) Even Knocked Up adheres to the “boy + girl + oops = happy family” formula. Juno does not. Waitress—perhaps the bravest and most underrated of the bunch—did not.
Like all movies, “Oops Pregnancy” comedies—let’s go ahead and declare it a subgenre—tell us stories about ourselves, whether they do so consciously or not. Are you a so-called “afterparty baby”? Might you be a single career woman making the “lifestyle choice” to have a baby? Maybe you got knocked up by an unemployed stoner after drinking too much at the Strat. Did your mother have you because it was trendy to be preggers?
I say props to all parents. Babies come from all sorts of bodies, born to people of all types; it’s different for everyone. That said, it is nice to laugh at the expense of others—for instance, the ones who, as Maclean’s alleges, are having babies “like they are the new handbag.” Ouch... maybe it’s better to refer to babies as “lifestyle choices” than as mistakes or accessories.
Juno recently came out on DVD. The other day I was in the video store and overheard a customer on his cellphone talking to his girlfriend. “But honey,” he said. “I mean, teen pregnancy... really? That’s a ‘yuk’ now?” I’m sure a lot of people feel that way. Yuk or not, if pop culture keeps showing us alternatives to the nuclear family, in some perfect universe eventually all types of parents might get some modicum of respect. A mama can only hope.
