Croce and Juno – Anti-folk and Mass culture

The film Juno which was released last year (2007) received overwhelming popular and critical acclaim including an Academy Award for best screenplay. Personally I believe much of the popularity of the film came from the likeability of Juno, the protagonist played by Ellen Page. People (particularly younger people) are frequently influenced by representations they see in the media; and when a character is deemed ‘cool’ or desirable consumers strive to emulate their effortlessness, just as much as they would a celebrity or musician.

In The fragmentation of America: the erosion of mass culture Paul Croce discusses the significance of mass communication in understanding cultural change and the generation of distinct cultural styles. His argument is that by its very definition, mass culture reaches a large audience and produces large communities of fans “the ability of mass culture to produce these communities at a distance [allows] more and more distinct flowering of cultural styles.” His article examines the concept of clustering and the propensity for whole clusters of people to split off from mass culture and identify with people who share their distinct value systems but want nothing to do with other clusters. His belief is that this ‘clustering’ increases division between music scenes. I would argue that mass communication of cultural artefacts like music and films does the opposite. In the case of Juno mass communication of the film presents thousands of people with the same entity at the same time and they can choose to consume it how they like.

Ellen Page suggested that her character Juno would be a fan of the music by Kimya Dawson and The Moldy Peaches. The result was that the films soundtrack contains features several songs performed by Kimya Dawson and her bands Antsy Pants and The Moldy Peaches. To be exact there are 8 of 19 songs performed by Kimya Dawson and the other songs on the soundtrack are stylistically compatible. According to Wikipedia (possibly not the best source) the soundtrack has sold 611,512 copies in the U.S. as of mid-April 2008. I would argue that the popularity of the soundtrack is a direct result of the cool factor of Juno which makes people to want to emulate her, quote her and appreciate her musical taste, the quality of the music itself would play some part too. In response to Croce, instead of dividing people into small musical clusters the mass communication of anti-folk music through Juno had acknowledged the genre and increased it’s acceptability with a larger audience.

Croce PJ 1993, ‘The fragmentation of America: the erosion of mass culture’, Current, no. 357, pp 4-10.