Cultural Invisibility
The same commercial instinct that inspires film-
makers to use seamless continuity also compels
them to favor stories and themes that reinforce
viewers’ shared belief systems. After all, the film
industry, for the most part, seeks to entertain, not to
provoke, its customers. A key to entertaining one’s
customers is to “give them what they want”—to tap
into and reinforce their most fundamental desires
and beliefs. Even movies deemed “controversial” or
“provocative” can be popular if they trigger emo-
tional responses from their viewers that reinforce
yearnings or beliefs that lie deep within. And
because so much of this occurs on an unconscious,
emotional level, the casual viewer may be blind to
the implied political, cultural, and ideological mes-
sages that help make the movie so appealing.
Of course, this cultural invisibility is not always
a calculated decision on the part of the filmmakers.
Directors, screenwriters, and producers are, after
all, products of the same society inhabited by their
intended audience. Oftentimes, the people making
the movies may be just as oblivious of the cultural
attitudes shaping their cinematic stories as the
people who watch them.
Juno’s filmmakers are certainly aware that their
film—which addresses issues of abortion and preg-
nancy—diverges from the ways that movies tradi-
tionally represent family structures and teenage
girls. In this sense, the movie might be seen as
resisting common cultural values. But what they10 CHAPTER 1LOOKING AT MOVIES
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Exceptions to invisibilityEven Junodeviates from
conventional invisibility in a stylized sequence illustrating a
high-school jock’s secret lust for “freaky girls.” As Juno’s voice-
over aside detailing Steve Rendazo’s (Daniel Clark) fetish
begins, the movie suddenly abandons conventional continuity
to launch into a series of abrupt juxtapositions that dress a
generic girl posed like a paper doll in a rapid-fire succession of
eccentric accessories. The moment Juno’s diatribe ends, the
film returns to a smooth visual flow of events and images.
While this sequence is far from “realistic,” its ostentatious style
effectively illustrates the trappings of teenage conformity and
the ways that young women are objectified.