This video link shows the 2-minute clip where Juno reveals personal thoughts on what a family should be which shows the audience why she kept the baby.

The Juno Effect claims that movies such as Juno and Knocked Up, along with other teen pregnancy films, glorify teen pregnancy and encourage its effect on society. I argue that film gives the opposite effect. Rather than tell viewers they should live like the movie, it gives viewers a glimpse into someone else’s life and shows actual events that take place in many individual’s lives. This clip doesn’t demonstrate Juno’s purpose behind getting pregnant, however, it does show why she made the decisions she made with the cards she was dealt. She chose to keep the baby and give it up for adoption because families are meant to be “perfect, not shitty and broken” (Mark and Juno). By looking beyond that surface thought of, “this is just another teen pregnancy movie,” we are able to see that this is actually a film about why teens make the choices they do. This film isn’t shouting at teens to go get pregnant rather a statement from teens showing adults why they are who they are.

According to Juan Antonio Tarancón in his research article “Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007): A Practical Case Study of Teens, Film and Cultural Studies”, film is a “device that transforms a fictional account into effective social knowledge” (Tarancón pg. 455). Tarancón’s point is that film provides knowledge of a real world issue through a story, as if it were a parable or a metaphor. I agree with Tarancón that film is not the influence, rather the source of “effective social knowledge” because the events shown in film, particularly in Juno, aren’t new or predicting the future. They are mirroring, in a sense, events that are already taking place. Tarancón’s argument enforces my claim that teens make choices based on their own social influences and film is not the culprit behind their decisions. If film were a means to show teens what choices to make, it would, essentially, be a form of fortune telling. It would be dictating events to come rather than what is happening. Juno, instead, simply allows viewers to understand the choices teens make.