{"id":3246,"date":"2021-11-02T14:04:39","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T18:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/?p=3246"},"modified":"2024-09-21T10:44:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T14:44:34","slug":"a-love-letter-to-jennifers-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/2021\/11\/02\/a-love-letter-to-jennifers-body\/","title":{"rendered":"A Love Letter to “Jennifer’s Body”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Every year as we enter deep into October and everything around slowly begins to merge into some form of \u201cspooky,\u201d I always find myself drawn back to my favorite horror films, whether because they\u2019re scary or for entirely different reasons. <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/span><\/i>, a 2009 horror comedy written by Diablo Cody (<\/span>Juno<\/span><\/i>) and starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried, is not only one of my favorite horror movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. I loved it the first time I watched it\u2014and was thoroughly confused why not many people seemed to be loving it too\u2014and continue to fall deeper in love with it and its many layers the more times I watch it, the more I learn about the horror genre in general, and the more I learn about the people behind making it. Over the last few years, <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>has slowly shifted under public perception from a movie once deemed trashy to a perfectly-aged cult classic of feminist horror. The film\u2019s more recent reputation is deserved but many years late\u2014the clever intentions and crucial message were always there, but in 2009 neither the industry not the public were too interested in the cinematic achievements a women-made movie about a teenage girl who eats boys.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> The movie tells the story of Jennifer, a popular cheerleader who every other boy wants, and Needy, her shy and insecure best friend who admires her desperately. One night, Jennifer takes Needy to see a band, the two completely unaware that they are looking to sacrifice a virgin in a ritual in exchange for fame on that very night. Jennifer is the chosen one, but there\u2019s a tiny issue: she isn\u2019t a virgin. In the aftermath of the attempt, Jennifer transforms into a creature who still holds her alluring looks but which is no longer human\u2014a demonic being who needs to feed on boys for energy. She is hungry, and a worried Needy finds herself desperately wanting to save her best friend from what she is becoming.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>is a very, very intentional play on the usual female revenge narrative: a woman suffers some sort of abuse (usually sexual) and then rises from the ashes to kill every man. It\u2019s a tale told a million times before\u2014<\/span>Kill Bill, Spit on Your Grave, Hard Candy<\/span><\/i>\u2014and to be told a million times to come. There is a reason why female anger regarding trauma is such a recurring topic, but ultimately many of the movies that take on this plot structure end up coming off, especially to women, as utterly unrealistic. The anger itself is certainly relatable, but the narrative in which a woman triumphs over her abusers in shiny and violent fashion doesn\u2019t tend to quite match up with reality. Last year, the movie <\/span>Promising Young Woman <\/span><\/i>came out, offering a much more honest take on what the revenge narrative really is\u2014and, in a way, <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/span><\/i> was doing the same over a decade ago. The film embraces the extravagant nature of the revenge trope and commits to it unabashedly\u2014Jennifer\u2019s murdering of boys is so utterly satirical and exorbitant we almost forget it\u2019s revenge. We see an emotionally disconnected Jennifer who is essentially a monster, but when we are forced out of the fun, unapologetic gore, we see a version of her which is slowly decaying since her trauma. Though her decaying is presented to us as a metaphor of hunger, as we watch we are forced to face the disconnect between the two sides of Jennifer: one is an entertaining character in an entertaining movie, another is a reflection of all the women who are fighting hard to recover from trauma, anything but fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

As well as playing with the abuse revenge trope, <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>embraces its status as a horror comedy and works within that framework to sharply deconstruct tropes of horror, too\u2014and in doing so, it exposes how rooted in misogyny many of them are.\u00a0 The character of Jennifer herself is a rendition of a well-used horror character archetype: \u201cThe First Girl.\u201d In essence, the archetype is exactly that: the first girl to be killed. Her most defining characteristic is the fact that she is promiscuous and open about how much she enjoys sex. In most slashers, Jennifer would be gone by the twenty-minute mark. In <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body,<\/span><\/i> we spend the entire remaining screen time following the aftermath of the abuse that should have killed her, as she takes back the narrative and becomes the danger herself. Not only that, but the very thing that <\/span>saves<\/span><\/i> Jennifer from actually dying is the fact that she <\/span>isn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> a virgin\u2014if she had been, the sacrifice would have worked. The thing that allows her to kill so many men is also her sensuality: men can\u2019t help but follow her into deserted areas, the perfect setting for literally biting into their necks. The unapologetic enjoyment of sex, which is so often the weakness of so many female characters in horror films, is in <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>the titular character\u2019s biggest strength, the exact thing which transforms her into an unprecedently dangerous and powerful creature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Her best friend Needy, on the other hand, represents a horror archetype at the opposite end of the spectrum: \u201cThe Final Girl.\u201d This is the character that survives, the girl who wins over whatever great evil threatens her. Most times, the final girl is also a virgin\u2014a clear reflection of the persisting belief (both in the media and outside of it) that women are not worth dignity if they\u2019re not sexually pure. Needy is an embodiment of the Final Girl: innocent, virginal, upright, the exact contrast of her best friend. However, like Jennifer, Needy emerges beyond the archetype she represents. Behind her innocent admiration of Jennifer, there are many repressed feelings of attraction Needy seems to refuse to accept. Between the lines of the script, is the fact that Needy\u2014the film\u2019s rendition of an inherently heroic character\u2014sees herself in all the men that desperately want Jennifer–the simultaneous villains <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>victims. The key difference is that these men see nothing but Jennifer\u2019s body, failing to realize it is much more than a body (the disconnect between what men look at when they see Jennifer\u2019s body and what her body actually does to them is the ironic origin of the movie\u2019s name.) Needy, on the other hand, sees Jennifer for all of what she is, the good and the bad\u2014which is perhaps exactly <\/span>why <\/span><\/i>she is the final girl. Additionally, there\u2019s a very important event in the movie that further deconstructs the misogynistic foundation of the final girl trope: Needy loses her virginity. The movie still plays with the trope and the possibilities it offers, but only allows itself to do so when it\u2019s freed from the sexist implications that come along. In the cases of both Jennifer and Needy, archetypes are a framework under which real women come alive in the moment their existence and value are separated from their sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another way in which <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/span><\/i> subverts the misogyny of these tropes is through the underlying relationship at the center of it. Jennifer and Needy have been best friends for years, but under the surface of their close friendship are sexual and romantic affections, complicated by the jealousy and protection they often feel towards each other. Needy\u2019s boyfriend Chip is portrayed as a dull contrast to her attractive and perpetually interesting best friend, and all the men Jennifer eats are as easy to kill as it is for a hot girl to lure them into quiet areas. Intentionally, there isn\u2019t much dimension to a lot of the male characters, which contrasts the complex and layered relationship Needy and Jennifer have with each other. This even further removes their value as characters from their connections to men, driving home the point that, though <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>is a horror movie, it won\u2019t give into the sexist implications many of the genre\u2019s usual tropes carry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> The retelling of the revenge trope through the gory lens of a feminist horror comedy was exactly writer Diablo Cody\u2019s intention\u2014her target audience in mind was teenage girls and young women, as she knew they would see themselves in the allegory of Jennifer’s story. The production company had something else in mind: Megan Fox was the one playing the protagonist, and the assumption was that, with a popular sex symbol at the forefront, the movie had to be marketed towards men. Due to this equivocal marketing strategy, the young women the movie was written for didn\u2019t go watch it, and the men who were expecting to see a half-naked Fox filmed in suggestive camera movements left disappointed and disconnected from a narrative that, on the surface, painted men like them as nothing but hot-girl food. Along with camera movements that refused to sexualize Fox the way she had been captured through so much of her career, (an obvious result of the fact that the movie\u2019s director is a woman) the plot didn\u2019t land with either of the target audiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Naturally, the film was a box-office disaster. It certainly didn\u2019t help that by then Fox was perceived as a mere sex symbol\u2014talent was an afterthought when discussing her presence in the industry. This is a reputation that still precedes the actress, and it is the reason why, despite her years of career showing her ability to excel in a range of characters and genres, Fox still doesn\u2019t get many parts. During the making of the movie, she was aware of how her reputation was implicated in its message, but still felt passionate about the project; after the release and initial fail, she continued to recognize the movie as her favorite she\u2019s been in, and to this day is proud to claim this. Fox saw her own life reflected in Jennifer\u2019s journey: at that point, she was excoriated by the men around her in the business, left to deal alone with the consequences of the ways they treated her. Like the women <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>was written for, the star of the movie herself saw in that script the untold anecdote of what she had been through. In many ways, the reasons why the film failed are the same that fueled the making of it in the first place: women having their voices stolen from them and being deemed as nothing but sexual objects.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Throughout the years, though, as our society has become a little more ready to listen to women (key word: little), the intention that was always behind <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>started to finally come through. The appeal of clever feminist social commentary paired with some cannibalistic gore started began to get the recognition it deserved, and slowly the movie turned into a cult classic. Though it took a decade too much, <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>is finally getting the recognition it deserves for its crazy, beyond-its-time concept, and most of all for the talent of all the women behind it\u2014Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama, Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, to name a few. The horror cult classic status is much, much more than deserved\u2014and I\u2019m excited to keep watching it on Halloween knowing the message behind <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/span><\/i>is each year being heard louder and louder.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every year as we enter deep into October and everything around slowly begins to merge into some form of Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2074,"featured_media":3247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-letter-to-art","category-reflections","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3248,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions\/3248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}