I’ll do my own morals, thanks.

Apparently, this year’s triumphant low-budget indie flick Juno is A Bad Thing For Society. In it 16-year-old Juno has sex, gets pregnant, has her baby adopted by a loving mother and goes back to her normal, happy life. Do you see that? See what they did there? She had underage, unprotected sex with little or no negative consequence! Where’s the mother-effing retribution?!

All manner of people are up in arms about poor old Juno. The pro-choicers think that she should have had an abortion. The pro-lifers think it’s great that she chooses to have her baby. But concerned lunatics everywhere think she sends out the message that kids getting pregnant is okay.

What Juno actually does is provide a brilliant 120 minutes of entertainment. The film is truly excellent. Juno, played by Ellen Page, is bright, independent and really really funny. She forgoes an abortion when she didn’t want a child and instead finds a couple looking to adopt a baby, carries her child to term then gives it away, quite happily. And no, there is no divine retribution (isn’t childbirth punishment enough?) but what we all have to understand here is that this is just a film.

It’s a made up story about one person. This film knows that it isn’t its job to make judgements on the character’s decisions, it just tells the story and well. The naysayers from different groups have one thing in common: they imply unquestioningly that films guide the morals of their viewers.

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Update 04/04

For the sort of intelligent, thoughtful commentary on this subject that I am unable to provide, take a look at Mike Monypenny’s blog here