If Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody () hadn't given interviews declaring her script for Jennifer's Body to finally be a feminist entry in the horror genre─to openly "take back the knife," in gendered film-study parlance─we might have no beef with her movie.
But she did. A lot.
So we do. A lot.
Over to the left of us on the timeline of cinema history, we have every horror movie ever made─most of them "drenched in taboo and encroaching vigorously on the pornographic," a 1987 turn of phrase from feminist film scholar Carol J. Clover. Guy goes psycho, engages in killing spree of largely female victims; sexual brutality and murderous double entendres are sprinkled heavily throughout (along with lots of bare breasts). Psycho is then finally knocked off by lone, pale-faced survivor in some sort of feeble, happy accident. However, survivor's trauma makes the conclusion less relieving that one might hope.
In terms of convention, Cody doesn't deviate too much: she says that in order to subvert horror's sexist tropes, you have to start by including them. Then, you pick 'em off. So in Jennifer's Body, we start with tropes aplenty. We have The Experimental Sleepover, at which a panty-and-tiny-tee-clad Megan Fox athletically tongues the depths of Amanda Seyfried's pillowy mouth. We have The Unexplained Nudity, Jennifer's body quite literally on display as Fox swims naked in the moonlight. And we have those winking entendres, like when Needy (Seyfried) finally vanquishes the be-demonized Jennifer with an industrial-grade X-Acto knife. Of her weapon, Needy shrieks, "This is for cutting boxes!"
Here's where it gets tricky: can we joke about sex and violence without getting egg on our faces─without reinforcing the conceits we intend to subvert? In Cody's hands, the attempt yields clumsier results than if her aim were less ambitious. If you want a girl-on-girl makeout at a sleepover to be a "Hell, yeah, girl power!" moment, it might help to explain why the girls are making out. As it appears in the context of the movie, it's so gratuitous you can practically hear someone megaphoning, "This'll totally sing in the trailer." (Guess what? It does. The top Google result for the talented Seyfried is her "Lesbian Kiss Video.") And there are more meaningful, frustrating examples─like an uncomfortable scene in which Jennifer is bound, gagged, and brutalized in a gang-rape-reminiscent tableau. We want so badly to see a badass Jennifer avenge that torture, but she doesn't. And with the indie-rock-band perpetrators drunk and singing en masse while they "go all Benihana on her ass," the whole thing is just . . . kinda gross. (Note to Cody: considering you're two-for-two, how's about we deep-six the script references to Benihana? Unless you're sponsored by them?)
Outside of that scene, it's hard to feel for Jennifer as horror's first feminist when she's basically written as a crass . Quoth the raven-haired, pool-water-eyed beauty, she has a "bigger d--k" than her pimply, pipsqueak male victims. She's the locker-slamming, trash-talking, hallway bully. High-school boys are sissies, bashed as feminine: when they're not crying at funerals or saying something sweetly perceptive, they're writing creative nonfiction, wearing guy-liner, painting their nails, or posing for pre-prom pictures with their tiara'd little sisters. This movie is not genre-subverting so much as genre-reinforcing: it annihilates the symbolically feminine (emotion, intuition, sensitivity) in one big ketchup splatter, all for the gain of the symbolically male (physical violence, sexual aggression).
Perhaps we can lean on Needy as our "feminist" heroine. She's a caricature of the women's studies major, with her dumpy intarsia sweater, Harry Potter glasses, and unbrushed Jan Brady hair. (What, Birkenstocks were a shade too obvious?) Jennifer derides her as "butch." But Needy is motivated to battle satanic forces only when Jennifer kills her boyfriend, the last straw in Girl World.
Maybe we shouldn't be shopping for role models here. This a horror movie, after all, and as the dopey Scooby-Doo sound effects indicate, an attempt at black comedy. But throw an Oscar precedent and some you-go-girl lip service into the equation, and for better or worse, you ratchet hopes up─at least in the minds of us featherheaded girls.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
