Juno: “A Cautionary Whale”

Juno: “A Cautionary Whale”

“It all started with a chair.”

At first glance, this does not sound like the opening to an Aristotelian Epic or a Joseph Campbell-style Hero’s Journey. Upon closer look, however, this story shares many of the same elements as other classic hero journeys, like The Lord of the Rings or even The Bible. Set in a small, awkward, midwestern town, Juno is the ultimate modern-day epic. The movie follows the story of a sixteen year-old girl, Juno, who becomes pregnant after an awkward hookup with a friend. The film perfectly captures the heroic journey of pregnancy, love, high school drama, acceptance, and commitment.

Coincidentally, Juno’s namesake, the roman goddess of love and fertility, follows a similar story to the 16 year-old protagonist in Juno.  According to roman mythology, the goddess Juno gave birth to a deformed son, Vulcan. Juno was so ashamed by her son that she casts him from the heavens to work in fiery volcanoes of earth.

The story of Juno (the film) is not nearly as brutal as the protagonist’s ancient namesake, but it is clear that the reference is beyond coincidence.

Just like the age old Monomyth, Juno opens in the ordinary world: a pleasant autumn in a suburb town, full of cross-country runners and sassy convenience store clerks.

Departure (Fall):

The journey begins as we see our protagonist, Juno, peeing on a pregnancy test that reveals to be positive; this is the call to adventure.

Juno’s first reaction is to refuse the call, choosing to abort the new fetus. She sticks to her plan with great determination for a good while, hoping to revert her life to the way it was before. Abortion proves too much for Juno, as the montage of finger-tapping in the waiting room ends with her running out of the clinic; Juno has gives up on the abortion, officially crossing the threshold into the journey of pregnancy.

The next stage of the Hero’s Journey is by far the most self-explanatory stage in Juno: Juno literally starts to grow a “Belly of the Whale”. People start to find out about her pregnancy, rumors start to spread, and Juno officially enters a world that she has never before know

Initiation (Winter):

Juno is faced with a road of trials (essentially the rest of the movie), like breaking the news to her parents, confronting rude ultrasound-technicians, and acknowledging her feelings towards the father, Paulie. One of the most significant challenges in the film, choosing the right family, is presented in the classic three-tries sequence: Juno finds the perfect family for adoption on the third try, after two very unsuccessful leads in the newspaper. Just like life, the road of trials makes up a decent part of the story. Juno’s meeting with the goddess comes as Juno finds the perfect parents for her child: Mark and Vanessa. Vanessa is a suburban wife who wants desperately to become a mother, offering to pay Juno for medical expenses and obsessing over every detail, from prenatal vitamins to the color of the baby’s bedroom. This could not be more ideal for Juno, and for once, she feels comfort that her child will be in good hands. Everything changes, however, as Mark is faced with the temptress: not a woman, but the idea of freedom. Throughout the movie, Mark has been enthralled with grunge music, horror movies, and a general bachelor-style life. Mark decides to leave Vanessa to pursue this life, leaving Juno thinking that the whole adoption will be jeopardized. At this low point in the movie, Juno comes home to talk with her father about love and life, giving them a connection deeper than previously seen in the movie. Later on, moments before Juno’s water breaks, you see a shot of Juno pushing a toy car over her arc-shaped belly; once the car hits the bottom, her water breaks. This shot perfectly juxtaposes Juno’s pregnant arc-shaped belly with a rising action poetic model, the car representing Juno, and her journey through pregnancy.

Return (Spring):

Juno, Leah, and her parents rush in a fearful flight to the hospital, as both Juno’s stepmom and Leah pool their support toward Juno’s painful labor. At last, the child is born, and is given to an ecstatic Vanessa. Juno finally makes up with Paulie, and they once again begin their relationship that was halted by the pregnancy, both now much wiser than before. The film ends with Juno and Paulie singing the song that was playing during Juno’s labor.

Juno is a classic combination of an archetypal Hero’s Journey and the modern day social issue of teen pregnancy. I would give the film 5 stars.

Sources:

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Tr-Wa/Vulcan.html

http://www.uky.edu/~aubel2/eng104/myth/hero.pdf

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/

Cinema and The Matrix

Cinema

In January 1896, The Lumiere Brothers screened one of the most famous pieces of cinema to this day. Their 48-second film, titled Arrivalof a Train at La Ciotat, was comprised of one shot of a train arriving and loading passengers at a station. Although a seemingly simple clip, urban legend claims that the audience at the film premiere was so shocked, that people fled the theater in fear of the train crashing through the screen. 

This simple clip was the start of a global obsession that has changed human culture as we know it.

Today, this obsession is called Cinema. 

When the word Cinema is brought up in conversation, many imagine a dark room with a movie projector, a DVD player in their living room, or a laptop with Netflix in their bedroom. Although these are all acceptable definitions of Cinema, they only describe a small portion of a much deeper phenomenon. 

Cinema is the projection of an original and ideal universe created solely by humans, with every director since the Lumiere Brothers acting as a god of creation. 

This universe is equipped with rules, regions, and species that are slightly different than our universe. In the world of Cinema, conversations are often paced faster, characters are often positioned closer to each other, and light, color, and contrast are far more intense. People can dodge death, or be killed off far too easily. People living in the universe are often extremely ideal looking and act like the best or worst people in our world.

Most importantly, in this universe, rules can be broken to achieve one master motive:

to bait people into the world of Cinema and keep them there for as long as possible. 

In essence, Cinema is the creation of an ideal universe, containing just enough elements of the real world to make an audience feel comfortable, but bending the laws of our world to make the audience experience interesting situations that are unachievable in the real world.

Cinema and The Matrix

The Matrix uses aspects of the cinematic universe throughout the movie to convey both the idealism and illusion of the computer-simulated world. 

The opening scene of The Matrix is a black screen with glowing green text that shows computer code. The camera slowly drifts toward the text until the letters become indistinguishable, with only bright glowing green pixels in the field of view. Suddenly the camera flashes into a new location: a world we later find out is the Matrix. The viewer assumes that the world is the real world, but is put off by the lighting. Everything in this world is unnaturally dark, unsaturated, and high in contrast. In every shot, the main two colors are green and black. After a brief fight scene, a new scene opens with a sleeping Keanu Reeves being awoken by a strange message on his computer. 
At this point, the cinematography of the film is breaking a lot of cinematic standards. These broken-rules grab the audience's attention and make them feel like there is more going on than meets the eye. At this point, there is also a slight subliminal link between the green text on the black screen in the beginning, and the constant green and black color scheme of the movie. 

This foreshadowing could not be more true. The audience soon finds out that Neo (Reeves) is living in a computer simulation while his body is being used for energy. 

Once Neo is awoken from the Matrix, you see the color scheme quickly change. Things are still very dark, but everything has a far more neutral color scheme. Suddenly Neo is not the handsome 20-something year old that he was before, but instead a horrific looking man-baby, bald and covered in slime. Neo breaks out of his pod, is sucked down a long tube, violently splashed into a pool of water, and pulled out by a long arm into a bright light. You watch as Neo breathes air and sees light for the first time. This brutal childbirth metaphor transitions the movie back into a normal color-scheme, whereafter it follows far more cinematic rules than before. This transition back to traditional cinema proves to the audience that he is, in fact, in the "real world" of the movie. 

The film continues in the "real world", until Morpheus and Neo decide to spar in a simulated dojo. Although they are in a computer simulation, they are not in the computer-created world, and therefore the color scheme is neutral. Their appearance, however, are the most ideal versions of themselves, with Neo back as the handsome 20 year old that he was before. The scene heavilly resembles corny old Kung-Fu style movies, once again comparing the unrealism of Cinematic world to the computer-simulation world.  

The movie continues to make references to Cinema styles throughout the movie, reinforcing the connection between the cinematic universe and the computer simulations. 

As the movie progresses towards the climax, the movie uses more and more revolutionary special effects during Neo's fight scenes, showing the audience that Neo's interactions with The Matrix are changing the rules of the simulated world. The most famous effect is the Bullet Time effect, a technique pioneered by Warner Brothers, in which many cameras are positioned around an actor to created a swooping slow motion shot. 

Finally, the climax scene starts with a classic western-style showdown between Agent Smith and Neo. The fight goes on for a while, but ends with a very momentous scene. Neo stops the bullets shot by Agent Smith, and suddenly realizes that the world is not real. Suddenly everything becomes green text on a black background, just like the first scene. Agent Smith goes ape on Neo, while Neo effortlessly fights him off. 

The Matrix does a suburb job of both using and breaking and using cinematic rules to convey both reality and unrealism, tell a fantastic story, and make us ponder the boundaries between the world of Cinema, created by the Lumiere Brothers, and the world we live in today.

Cheers,

Jesse Nichols.

Work Cited:

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

-http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000012/?ref_=ttspec_spec_tt

-http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIXNpePYzZU

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IDT3MpSCKI-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTt6-8l80dU
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4yuhvccQog

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKEcElcTUMk
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=w_su7Kdz3pg#t=23
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Z7oYktf2H78#t=88

Hello Earth

Hello Earth,
My name is Jesse Nichols. I am a WWU Freshman and have 7 years of experiencing directing and creating videos for the internet. I have 2 years of professional freelance/contract video experience, ranging from music videos to promotional videos.
Linked is one of my favorite videos that I have made. It is a documentary of the band Paundy performing in a local 4th of July parade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYadjzjdlI4

I am looking forward to reviewing lots of movies in the upcoming quarter.
Enjoy!
Jesse Nichols