Vanessa Loring Syndrome

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Joined: 13 Apr 2009
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,887
Location: Port Royal, South Carolina

21 Aug 2012, 2:46 pm

Everyone needs someone to care about in a story, right? Someone we can stick by, hug, root for. Done right, audience connection is guaranteed. Done poorly, however, the characters you create might suffer from what I call Vanessa Loring Syndrome, named after Jennifer Garner's character from the movie Juno.

You see, Vanessa could've been the real star of the movie. She's determined to be a mother, a very human motivation that strikes our hearts. She's more motherly and collected than Juno's stepmother, and probably the only level headed member of the cast of weirdos and screw-ups.

Oh. Did I say that she was motherly, collected, and level-headed?

EYE LIED. Except for the "determined to be a mother" part. Maybe.

The truth is, Vanessa Loring is a b***h.. She's arrogant, extremely self-centered, complains and groans near-constantly, and treats everyone around her like pond scum, or even worse, sees them as puppets. Juno fails as an inspirational movie because of this. In Diablo Cody's zeal for audience connection, she ended up setting my tolerance dial for adoptive parents back about a few decades, which explains why I favor abortion so much. To avoid a debate, let move on.

It's bad enough that, beneath all the heartwarming moments of bonding with Juno and quirky dialogue, Vanessa permeates such an aura of prurience and ill-will that she comes off like a female equivalent of John Huston from Chinatown.

Yes, I just compared a woman who adopted a child at the end to a psychopath who fathered a child with his daughter. Insane as it may sound, I have my reasons.

I didn't feel uplifted or enlightened or whatever you call it by the ending of Juno. Instead, I found it to be akin to the ending of Chinatown; shocking, nihilistic, depressing. I have to watch To Live and Die in L.A. on a regular basis just to sooth the trauma, and that's saying something. In fact, when compared to Juno, TLADILA is a happy, uplifting movie with an absolutely huggable protagonist!

Oh, shi--