Juno and Jenny, Juno

Evidentally one of the higher rated movies of the year is Juno, a comedy about "whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker," according to Wikipedia. IMDB says: "Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual and bizarre decision regarding her unborn child." I don't know what that decision is because I've never seen the movie.

When I saw the trailer on TV here I immediately thought of the 2005 Korean movie Jeni, Juno (제니주노, can be romanized Jenny or Jeni). A summary from a blog on Koreanfilm.org (via Gusts of Popular Feeling):

Yesterday was the press screening of Jenny, Juno, a story about a 15-year old boy and girl who discover that, after having things get a little out of control one night, they are expecting a baby. This film from the director of My Little Bride has stirred up a little controversy of its own these days. The Korea Media Ratings Board originally gave it an 18+ rating, despite the complete absence of any onscreen sex, nudity, violence, or foul language (distributor Show East was expecting a 12+ rating). The ratings board instead cited the very idea of the film itself as being potentially damaging to young viewers -- one board member reportedly said, apparently seriously, "If we let this through, soon they'll be making films about elementary school students having sex!"

The writer of Juno addresses the coincidence on her blog:

Unbeknownst to me, we had another spiritual cousin out there, a Korean movie called Juno Jenny. This time, the cousinry goes one step further and the movie is about--seriously--a pregnant teenager and her cute, sweet boyfriend. (The guy character is named Juno, not the girl.) There's no adoption subplot and apparently the film is otherwise dissimilar to mine, but how fucked up is that? I bring this up because a journalist drilled me about it recently--awkward!--and also because I saw someone on our IMDB board wondering if Juno was a remake of the K-flick. So for the record, 1.) it isn't a remake 2.) I haven't seen Juno Jenny, though I want to now, and 3.) I don't think anyone would even bat an eye about this if my film was called Jenny. The name Juno is just so darned distinctive that confusion is inevitable.

Actually, I think Jonny addressed this in the most succint way: "Like you'd watch a Korean movie."

Yeah, well, I'm not sure I buy that it's a coincidence. The plots deviate in a few key areas, although I find the similarities too. . . similar.

Anyway, here's a portion of a review of Jenny, Juno from 2005 from the blog All For The Love of Movies:

What I'm afraid of is the impression that this movie might give to young audience. Raising children by children isn't like raising puppies that only need to be fed and played with. It takes more than that. The film failed to emphasized that or even mention it. Aside from that, what saddens me is that abortion becomes part of the choices. Shouldn't it be not mentioned at all?

Anyway, as a romantic/drama movie, this one had surely soared high! It's great! One of the best, I should say, especially for being so bold in tackling such topic. However though, I'd advised parents to see this films with their teens and not let them get the impressions that teen pregnancy is cool! Despite that, this one tops my favorites list!

Take a look at the Popular Gusts post I mentioned earlier for some social context on teenage sex in Korean movies. In case you were wondering, UNICEF---in A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations---has data on "births to women aged below 20 per 1,000 15 to 19 year olds." South Korea has 2.9, the lowest out of all nations examined, while the US has 52.1, the highest. Elsewhere in the report it says that 5,621 births to women under 20 in South Korea in 1998. There were 494,357 in the US. Even adjusting for the great population difference (roughly 48 million to 300 million), South Korea has 93% fewer such births in comparison to the States. You can read the document here, in .pdf form.

That's not to say that there aren't bizarre attitudes toward teengers and sex in South Korea (see here and here, for example), but based on the numbers I think it's a little inappropriate for a country with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy among "rich nations" to use the words "comedy" and "teenage pregnancy" in the same sentence.



* edit: As if you needed further evidence that I should never be a math teacher, I just realized that there's no reason to account for the population difference, because the stats out of 1,000 would---duh---still be the same.