I braced for a skirmish(fight) in the culture wars when reviews of Juno appeared the

very same week that newspaper headlines announced a rise in the teenage birth
rate—the first uptick in a decade and a half. “Not many [movies] are so daring in
their treatment of teenage pregnancy, which this film flirts with presenting not just as
bearable but attractive,” wrote the New York Times’A.O. Scott, who added a (wry-
mocking humour) homily: “Kids, please! Heed the cautionary whale(a young pregnant girl
who serves as a warning to others her age).” If the critic at liberal-media headquarters was
mildly clucking, it was only a matter of time before anti-Hollywood moralizers would
be up in arms about the corruption of youth (at the hands of a former-stripper-
turned-screenwriter, Diablo Cody, no less). But among Juno’s distinctive charms is
that it seems to have disarmed both sides of the family values debate. And the feat
gets pulled off in the wry style of the eponymous hero: The film doesn’t offer up a
formulaic or fervent call for family harmony. Instead, it takes idiosyncratic(individual,
personal) aim at everybody’s pieties(devoyion, religious).

One by one, polarized positions on the hot-button issues get defused by a 16-year-
old girl who has evidently never considered marching with any crowd—an approach
hard enough to manage in life, never mind in high school. Let’s start with Juno
MacGuff’s own profile. She has a blue-collar background(working class), complete
with parents who’ve never heard of Pilates(system of excercising) and hoard
kitsch(considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way) in
their house. But there isn’t much sign of the red-America attitudes that either radio
talk-show hosts, or snooty(proud, arrogant) liberals, assume go with the pedigree. A
heartland family, hers is not an intact one. An off-beat girl(diff from others), she’s a
very good daughter whose dad adores her.

Supersmart but neither a teacher’s pet nor a pariah(a member of a low caste of southern
India.), Juno eludes hip vs. square student stereotypes, too. Early on, she jokes about
herself as the kind of freaky girl—”with horn-rimmed glasses and vegan footwear
and Goth makeup” or Converse All-Stars and cello skills—whom jocks secretly want.
But in fact she and her friend Bleeker, in his dweebily short running shorts, confound
their peers’ social categories altogether—and adults’ preconceptions, too.
Subverting(destabilize or unsettle) age and gender expectations, Juno seems at
once peculiarly mature and oddly childlike as she fearlessly figures things out for
herself; she’s neither the suave teen whom liberal types invoke nor the old-
fashioned innocent whom the Christian right celebrates. And with her funky get-ups
and wit, Juno is in no way sexualized, but she isn’t de-sexed either, as her ever-
bigger belly shows us.

Her take on the roster of family values issues is as heterodox(_____) as her image.
Consider her sendup(n act of imitating someone or something in order to ridicule them)
of the term sexually active, a trope of the sex-ed wars. Liberal advocates of honest,
open sexual communication with teens embrace the epithet as though it were part
and parcel of puberty. Abstinence promoters invoke it as the plague to be avoided at
all costs. For Juno, it’s ridiculous, an Orwellian phrase that in no way speaks to her
actual experience (sex, once, in a chair)—as is surely true, when you stop and think
about it, for the majority of high-school juniors who aren’t virgins.

The real flashpoint issue in the film, of course, could have been abortion. Here
Cody’s politics (presumably pro-choice) are at odds with her plot needs (a birth) and,
who knows, maybe commercial dictates, too, if studios worry about antagonizing(o
become hostile) the evangelical (according to the teaching of the gospel or the
Christian religion.)audience. It’s a tension the screenplay finesses deftly, undercutting
both pro-life and pro-choice purism. Pregnant Juno at first reflexively embraces
abortion as the obvious option, and her best friend is at the ready with phone
numbers; she’s helped other classmates through this. But just when pro-lifers might
be about to denounce this display of secular humanist decadence, Juno stomps out
of the clinic, unable to go through with it.

She isn’t moved by thoughts of the embryo’s hallowed rights, however, but by a
sense of her own autonomy. And for her, that doesn’t mean a right to privacy, or to
protect her body (“a fat suit I can’t take off,” she calls it at one point). Juno is driven
by the chance to make her own unconventional choice. Parental notification doesn’t
quite follow the liberal or conservative scripts, either: Juno confides in her father and
stepmother, initially portrayed as stock down-home folks who are completely
surprised, not least to find themselves asking her if she’s “considered, you know, the
alternative”—not that they’d presume to pressure her. These are neither old-style
authoritarians nor enlightened empathizers. They emerge as people who respect,
and would do anything to support, their independent-minded kid.

Here Juno moves into the realm of marriage and childrearing, by way of the vexed
terrain of assisted reproduction in its most traditional form, adoption. When Juno
finds the perfect yuppie adoptive couple for her unborn baby—fussy Vanessa and
mellow Mark—the film gets to address a bundle of politically charged questions:
class mores, parenting styles, gender relations, and family structure. On every
count, Juno skewers the assumptions of ideologues on both sides. She refuses to
be either an exploited female at the service of the affluent, or a sacrificial vessel of
life. She counters Vanessa’s materialist and hyper-maternalist solicitude with her
own hard-boiled attitude; appalled by the notion of open adoption (or compensation),
she tells the couple she’d love to give over the kid immediately, but figures it needs
more “cooking” until it gets cuter. And she quickly starts bonding with the laid-back
husband, who is still nursing rock band dreams, where the uptight wife, worrying
over the color palette for the nursery, turns her off.

Juno has a fun-loving adolescent’s enthusiasm for the prospect of what sounds like
a permissive family with a cool dad—until Mark suddenly upsets that ideal vision of
the future. He—spoiler alert—stages a display of just the kind of egotistical guy
regression that regularly induces female groans on the right and left, and
that Slate’sMeghan O’Rourke recently examined in this piece about Knocked
Up.(Suffice it to say, Vanessa finds herself stranded.) Stunned, Juno is suddenly
furious at the infantile male and frantic that what she calls “the big-ass bump” end up
in a family “not shitty and broken like everyone else’s.”

But Juno doesn’t end there. Another twist, and the film closes with a celebration of
single parenthood—anathema to family traditionalists. Yet Juno, in deciding to hand
her baby over to a now-solo Vanessa, doesn’t endorse the dour, who-needs-men-
when-we-can-go-it-alone ethos of progressives who defend “permeable”
arrangements, either. A great comic scene in a bustling mall has convinced Juno—
and us in the audience—that Vanessa isn’t actually a vain control freak whose life
plan won’t be complete without a perfect little appurtenance. Juno has stumbled on
a woman who actually finds kids, of all things, fun and lovable. That is a figure whom
both liberals and conservatives often seem to have forgotten, or lost faith in, as they
endlessly lament the embattled family. If sharp-eyed girls can spot her in the fraught
landscape, though, there’s reason to hope the culture wars will wane and the
American family, in its many forms, won’t.
Uneducated. Ghetto. Unreliable. Fat. Thuggish. Hoodrat.

These were words used—by blacks and non-blacks alike—to describe Rachel Jeantel on Twitter
and in the media after her testimony during the controversial George Zimmerman trial.

Witness number eight, Rachel Jeantel, was Trayvon Martin’s close friend, and the last person to
speak with him before his death—the prosecution’s key witness. During the trial, she took the
stand and did what every witness is told to do: She told her version of the truth, and she did so
in the way that felt most natural to her.

However, as Jeantel gave her testimony, she was treated unlike other witnesses who gave their
testimony during the course of the trial. Instead of focusing on what Jeantel said and the ways in
which her version of events may have shed light on Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, many
people could not see past the way she looked or spoke.

Minutes into her testimony, many Twitter users, among other social media users, had already
deemed her uneducated and unreliable. As CNN contributor and political scientist Jason
Johnson put it, “The swiftness with which she was viewed as a good or bad witness by some had
more to do with how she looked [and spoke] than what she actually said.” Because Jeantel did
not speak the “proper” English of white, middle class America, she was immediately
characterized as “unsophisticated” and therefore not worthy of being heard or treated as a
credible witness.

Now, we must ask ourselves: What determines credibility? Is appearance and speech sufficient
enough to make that determination? Why is speaking ebonics, or the decision not to code-
switch, immediately a symbol of a lack of education? Who created these standards?

In the state’s closing statement, prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda included the following on
Jeantel: “Now, this young lady—and I will submit to you is not a very sophisticated person, she’s
not the most educated, but she’s a human being and she spoke the best she could.” When her
own representative deemed her unintelligent, and effectively stated that she was simple-minded,
it is not surprising that Juror B37 likewise expressed that Rachel "felt inadequate toward
everyone because of her education and her communication skills.”

Jeantel’s experience not only reveals the negative stereotypes associated with being a heavy-set,
dark skinned, black woman in America, but also unveils the use of stereotypes as a mechanism
of isolation. During and after her testimony, Jeantel has been made to feel like the “other” by
blacks and non-blacks alike. Many non-blacks regard her as difficult to understand, an
unintelligent, angry witness just trying to “do the best she could,” and thus a character to be
pitied. What’s more, within the black community, many view her as embarrassing “for the race.”
Many would have preferred to be represented “well” by an articulate black woman who meets
white America’s standards, a defense mechanism likely stemming from the too-familiar pop
culture characterizations of black people as uneducated and inferior.
Why was Jeantel categorized as the “ghetto black female” who should not be listened to or who
deserved everyone’s pity? Because she rolled her eyes when Don West demeaned her? Or
because her enunciation wasn’t up to par?

Apparently, Rachel Jeantel wasn’t the right type of American. This was not only because she did
not speak “proper English” but also because she did so as a black woman. When people hear
Miley Cyrus’ southern twang, they don’t assume that she is unintelligent simply because of her
vernacular. She isn’t shunned from society because she says “y’all.” What made Rachel different
was that America chose not to understand her. Instead, many used her dialect to define her, a
dialect that most Americans are taught to associate with inferiority, only because it is most
prevalent in poor, black, and urban neighborhoods.

The response to Rachel was unsettling not only because it was offensive, but also because it
reinforces prejudiced beliefs of what type of person deserves respect in this country.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s
momentous “I Have a Dream” speech, we continue to strive to be judged not by the color of our
skin, but by the content of our character. But when black women are denied that right when they
don’t speak “the right way,” are not the right size, or do not meet the preconceived standards of
mainstream America, we all fail that dream.

So as we hear President Obama say that Trayvon Martin could have been him 30 years ago, we
know that there are also many Rachels in the world who don’t yet have a powerful voice
speaking for—or identifying with—them. In these cases, we must remember the words of writer
and civil right’s activist Audre Lorde: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her
shackles are very different from my own.”

Amanda D. Bradley ‘15 is a government concentrator in Dunster House. She is the president of
the Association of Black Harvard Women. Jasmine S. Burnett ‘16 is a government
concentrator in Lowell House. She is the ABHW Action Committee Chair.