The movie Juno is not only an excellent representation of film and the creative process coming together to create characters and a story that draws in the audience and allows them to invest themselves in the lives of the characters, but it is also an excellent example of the developmental process. This is because the movie reflects not only the development of its protagonist Juno MacGuff and her emotional growth and development, but also her physical development throughout her pregnancy.
Juno begins with the adolescent protagonist, sixteen year old Juno MacGuff, realizing that her one night stand with her friend and long-time crush, Paulie Bleeker, has resulted in her being pregnant. However when Juno goes to the clinic to receive the …show more content…

Juno stresses the importance the microsystem and macrosystem play in a person's development. Juno's microsystem is dysfunctional, and her relationship with her parents affects her development and her relationship with her friends and the other students at her school. The divorce between her father and her mother, who now has a new family and only sends her a cactus on Valentine's Day, and her impaired relationship with her stepmother have resulted in her adopting an abrupt and unusual persona that cause her to be somewhat of an outcast at school, as well as being unsure about her own relationships in the cases of Paulie and Mark. Additional strain is placed on Juno by the cultural values of her macrosystem, as the scorn she is shown by her peers and the staff at her school over her pregnancy causes her to feel angry with Paulie.
Jean Piaget described the four periods of cognitive development, and Juno's ability to think and reason analytically show that she is in the formal operational stage of her cognitive development. This stage is characterized by adolescents thinking "about abstractions and hypothetical concepts and reason analytically, not just emotionally. They can be logical about things they have never experienced." (Berger, 2008, p. 45 Table 2.2). The character of Juno is an excellent