The radical notion that women like good movies
And now Anita is “needy” no more because she has tasted the power, lived to tell the tale and will use her new demon passenger to right the wrongs that she sees fit. Even though she’s possessed, you can sense that she will guide herself and the demon within and take control of it. Freedom is a beautiful thing, even if you have to be possessed to make it happen.
‘Jennifer’s Body’ is not a traditional female possession film. The genre is generally typified by mild mannered asexual women who begin to act in overt and sometimes pathologized sexual ways once they become possessed. Jennifer’s sexuality, on the other hand is firmly established at the beginning of the film, from her clothing, the way she interacts with both her best friend Needy and the males in her school, to where she casually mentions that she is “not even a back door virgin anymore.”
Jennifer’s Body. Starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. Written by Diablo Cody. Directed by Karyn Kusama. imdb synopsis: A newly possessed cheerleader turns into a killer who specializes in offing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror? *** People cannot stop talking about the new upcoming Diablo Cody/Megan Fox/Karyn … Continue reading “Movie Preview: Jennifer’s Body”
We don’t have direct evidence of how Jennifer or Needy would describe their sexual orientations, but ‘Jennifer’s Body’ works as a depiction of the relationship between two young bisexual women. If nothing else, it subverts expectations around gender and sexuality in horror films. … Even when Jennifer and Needy resort to physical violence with each other, their conflict has an erotic, and even romantic, subtext.
Our theme week for October 2017 will be Women in Horror. Horror films have long been analyzed and critiqued for both their feminist and misogynist themes… With so many women protagonists and explorations of primal emotions, there is a lot to unpack regarding gender and horror.
It’s pretty uncommon in Hollywood to see a movie directed by a woman as only 3.4% of all film directors are women. It’s even more uncommon to see women directing films in genres intended for a largely male audience. Granted, all movies of any genre can be and are watched and enjoyed by people of any gender. However, Hollywood tends to market certain genres towards men, and for that reason, it’s even more difficult for women directors to get in on the market.
People who identify as bisexual are part of an often maligned group. Both straight and queer community members frequently express discomfort with the concept of bisexuality, feeling threatened by bisexuality’s refusal to fit cleanly into an either/or binary system of sexuality.
In the month of Halloween, we’ll be examining tropes of women and violence. There are many permutations of violent women throughout history and throughout genres. What is the connection between femaleness and violence? Why do we sometimes accept some types of violent women but not others? What do these value judgments say about our society?
Check out all of the posts for our Demon/Spirit Possession Theme Week here.
Halloween is upon us, so it’s time to contemplate the prolific theme of demon/spirit possession in film and on TV. Why is this such a prevalent theme? In many ways, possession explains evil as something separate from ourselves, something that infects us, which dichotomizes good and evil.
Why is female sexuality so controversial? Why does it make people (particularly the people who create our media) so uncomfortable? With desire comes subjectivity, which is powerful and subversive for a woman to experience within the context of patriarchy. Regulation of female reproductive rights and rape culture are two techniques used to deny women sexual agency.
Birth of the Living Dead is Rob Kuhns’ documentary of the making of George Romero’s 1968 cult horror genre game-changer Night of the Living Dead. Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD).
