The Useless Tree

Is Juno a Taoist?

      A lot, relatively speaking, of Taoism this week here at The Useless Tree.  My Confucian friends might be asking: what about us?  Don’t fear.  It’s all about the moment: I am working with students on the Tao Te Ching this week and next.  After that, we will read The Analects, which will, most likely, inspire more Confucian-esque posts.  For now, it’s Tao, and Tao is good…

    A question popped into my head  yesterday: is the main character of the movie Juno a Taoist?   

     For those who have not seen the movie, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that she, Juno, is a teenager who gets pregnant and decides to have the baby and put it up for adoption.  What makes the movie is not that piece of information, but how she goes about making the decision and following through on it.

      Her first impulse is to have an abortion.  She goes to a clinic and has a random encounter with another high schooler, a Christian anti-abortion activist who is staking out the abortion clinic.  Juno picks up on a stray image that the activist mentions: fetuses have fingernails.  When she goes into the clinic she is fairly quickly repelled, noticing everyone’s fingernails.  This leads to her decision to have the child and put it up for adoption. 

     So, her decision is not driven by a fully committed, religiously inspired anti-abortion stance.  She would likely accept the decision of any of her friends to have an abortion and, indeed, would likely support and help them through the stress and the strain.  Rather, she turns away from her own possible abortion because of a random encounter that produces a stray image.  I think it is not too far fetched an interpretation to suggest that she had a diffuse tendency against abortion which was animated by that random encounter.  And we could go a step further to say that perhaps some part of her feelings were an aversion to intervening in the natural unfolding of things.

     And that sounds rather Taoist to me: a diffuse avoidance of actions that might interfere with the natural unfolding of things.  Generally, I believe a modern day Taoist would have such a diffuse aversion to abortion in general, though that same modern day Taoist would never presume to determine or judge what another person might do in her own personal circumstances. 

      So, there is a Taoist sensibility to Juno.  And it gets more evident when considering other facets of the movie.

     When Juno is confronted with the frustrating reality that the couple she thought would be perfect to raise the child, turns out not to be, she does not let social convention keep her from the natural unfolding of things.  The husband/father reveals himself to be a jerk and leaves the wife/mother one the eve of the birth/adoption.  If she cared about the formal arrangements of marriage and a two-parent, mom and dad family context, Juno might have called it off and found another family to adopt the child.  But she doesn’t.  She recognizes the strong and natural love the wife/mother has for the baby-to-be, and Juno goes through with the adoption, conventional family be damned.  That, too, has a Taoist ring to it.

      And the boyfriend.  His blankness, naivete, uncertainty, all are muddled and murky in a Taoist sort of way.  And his final move back to Juno, acting impulsively on the spontaneous feelings within…. well, you get it.

     Maybe I am pushing this a bit too far.  What do you think?  Is Juno a Taoist?

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4 responses to “Is Juno a Taoist?”

  1. Justsomeguy Avatar
    Justsomeguy

    She certainly takes things as they come and doesn’t mind treating her pregnancy as a straw dog. I would say, “yes”.

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  2. The Cloudwalking Owl Avatar
    The Cloudwalking Owl

    I don’t hold with the purist notion that there is no meaning to the term “philosophical Daoists”, but I do maintain that there is more to it than walking through a forest with a smile on your face. 😉
    “Juno” is a fictional creation. Like Lisa Simpson she appeals to us because she is a wise adult in the body of a child. I certainly have never met a child that age who was anywhere near as perceptive as Juno. (I’ve met precious few seniors with her perception.) We do a disservice to what it means to be a child when we think that it is possible that they could act like an adult. (Isn’t this the sort of comment that Zhuangzi might make?)
    This is not simply a Philestine quibble, as the point of the Daoist tradition—as opposed to the books—is that wisdom seems to only come from effort. That is, “kungfu” or the trials that the stories talk about in the “wild stories” of the Daoist tradition.
    I get the impression that you gained much from the difficulties from raising a disabled child. Is that the source of any wisdom you may have? Was that your particular version of Old Lao’s furnace?
    We see none of the suffering and effort that would have led to Juno’s development of wisdom. So I would say that no, it is a nice story, but it is a fantasy, not a story of real wisdom. I would suggest another story that is more Daoist is “Life as a House”, which I would suspect people would like as much as “Juno”.

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  3. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Owl,
    Your point about children is well taken. My sense is that Taoism, generally, values the innocence of the child over the wisdom of the adult and, thus, would reject the construction in the movie of a child acting like, or being wiser than, an adult. That, on Taoist grounds, is a silly transvaluation.
    I wonder, however, at another point you raise. Is suffering required for Taoist wisdom? While I, too, was dissatisfied with the movie due to its avoidance of the obvious emotional aspects of the story (wouldn’t there be some stress and struggle over the situation Juno finds herself in?), I am not sure I would go that step further and suggest that Taoist understanding of Way requires some sort of suffering or struggle….

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  4. Niwashikun Avatar
    Niwashikun

    Sam,
    I agree with your ideas on the movie except the part about daoists being averse to abortions. You state “And that sounds rather Taoist to me: a diffuse avoidance of actions that might interfere with the natural unfolding of things. Generally, I believe a modern day Taoist would have such a diffuse aversion to abortion in general…….” This is a common view, that humans are not part of nature. Perhaps the abortion IS the natural way of things. Here’s an example: If humans build a dam on a river it’s seen as interference with the natural unfolding of things. If beavers build a dam on a river it is not. Everything is natural.. the question is what are the benefits and costs.
    Sam and Owl,
    It’s funny how even daoists get hung up on words. Owl states that Juno’s wisdom should come from effort and that a child should not have that wisdom (thus insinuating that wisdom is valued), Sam states that daoism values innocence over wisdom (and thus would reject the movie’s construct), yet Sam points out that Juno’s actions are often antithetical to common, adults’ wisdom. I would say that daoism sees a child’s innocence as wiser than an adult’s wisdom. Thus Juno’s wisdom is actually based on her lack of “wisdom”.

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