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‘Jennifer’s Body’ and Bisexuality

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.

This guest post written by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

While the feminist merits of the 2009 horror film Jennifer’s Body remain up for debate, there is no denying that it is a standout in its genre for being female-centric. Directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body follows the story of Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) and Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried), two teenage girls from a small town whose troubled friendship is shaken up when Jennifer is turned into a demon who must feed on human flesh. The film revels in Jennifer’s seduction and consumption of boys, but it simultaneously gives importance to the conflict between her and Needy. The film throws many heteronormative assumptions made by the audience into doubt. Jennifer isn’t afraid to talk about or act on her desire to have sex with men, but the most important relationship in her life is with Needy, and that relationship is eroticized at some key moments, including Jennifer referencing how they used to “play boyfriend-girlfriend.”

In a 2009 interview with The New York Times, Megan Fox describes Jennifer as a “cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader.” 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, Jennifer’s Body subverts expectations around gender and sexuality in horror films. Sexually active young women commonly meet their fates early on at the hands of the antagonist while their innocent/virginal counterparts survive. But as Gaayathri Nair observes in her article “Does Jennifer’s Body Turn the Possession Genre on Its Head?,” “Jennifer’s lack of purity saves her. The fact that she is not actually a virgin means that she gets a second shot at life.” Not only is she more than fodder for the sake of building tension, Jennifer becomes the most powerful character in the film, as Needy goes from her sidekick to her nemesis. Instead of being fueled by revenge or menace, Jennifer’s love/hate relationship with Needy is the driving force behind Jennifer’s Body. A competitive tension exists between their relationship and how they relate to the male characters that suggests an equal emotional, and even erotic, importance to their connection to each other.

When Needy introduces us to the setting of Devil’s Kettle High School, we see a scene of her watching Jennifer performing with the flag team from the bleachers. The setting and camera work — alternating between and slowly pushing in on Jennifer and Needy — acts as a visual homage to the cheerleader routine sequence from American Beauty. However, instead of emphasizing voyeurism and fantasy, as in the American Beauty scene, we see Jennifer and Needy smiling and waving, connected and mutually happy to see each other. Any potential voyeurism is also undermined by a classmate sitting behind Needy, who describes her relationship with Jennifer as “totally lesbi-gay.” The depth of the two girls’ connection reveals itself to be borderline supernatural even before the occult aspects of the film are introduced, when Needy senses Jennifer’s arrival to her house before we hear her at the door. “That’s fucking weird,” Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) comments.

When Jennifer becomes a demon, her bizarre behavior (including the murders) strains Needy’s love for her, but also intensifies their connection. The one actual sex scene in the film, between Needy and Chip, is cross-cut with Jennifer killing and eating Colin (Kyle Gallner). Not only does this equate Jennifer’s consumption of a male body with the more conventional eroticism of Needy and Chip having sex because they love each other, but the two scenes blend together as Needy has visions of blood seeping through her ceiling, and a demonic Jennifer standing over a previous victim. “I need you hopeless,” Jennifer growls at her prey, as Needy begins to whisper “hopeless” over and over, without seeming to know why. Even when trying to satisfy their hunger or connect with someone else, they can’t separate from each other.

Jennifer poses a threat to the young men of Devil’s Kettle, but Jennifer’s Body pushes male characters to the side, relegating them to tropes often embodied by women or other historically marginalized groups. In the beginning of the film, Jennifer refers to men as “morsels;” even before she literally eats them, she views men who she wants to sleep with as disposable objects for her consumption. Roman (Chris Pratt), Jonas (Josh Emerson), Ahmet (Aman Johal), and Colin are Jennifer’s prey, brought into her story so that she can exercise power and prestige both before she becomes a demon (Roman is a police academy cadet, which Jennifer claims gives her legal immunity) and after (she feeds on classmates Ahmet, Jonas, and Colin to replenish her powers). In the extended cut, Needy tries to reason with Jennifer, stating that they need to look for a cure so she can stop “killing people.” “No, I’m killing boys,” Jennifer responds, “Boys are placeholders. They come and they go.” Where characters who wield threatening magic in horror films are usually from marginalized groups — for example, the stereotype of a Romani woman cursing someone — Jennifer’s Body has Low Shoulder, the good-looking, white, male indie rock band who turn Jennifer into a demon as a side-effect of their quest to be “rich and awesome like that guy from Maroon 5.” And then there’s Chip, who takes on the role of the dutiful if clueless partner who needs saving from the supernatural threat in the third act.

If Jennifer were purely a stereotypical bisexual seductress sprung from a heteropatriarchal imagination, she would use erotic interaction between herself and Needy as an accessory to appear more attractive to the male gaze. Instead, Jennifer performs heterosexuality to get a response from Needy. Jennifer agrees to go on a date with Colin after Needy says that she thinks he’s cool, and threatens Needy by stating that she finds Chip attractive, intimating that she is going to fuck, kill, and eat him. In a role that is often filled by an attractive female character, Chip becomes a battleground between Jennifer and Needy.

Jennifer, Needy, and Chip’s dynamic allows space in the film for sexual attraction between characters of both same and other genders. If the film were to go with heteronormative expectations, Jennifer and Needy would be vying with each other for Chip’s affections. Rather, Jennifer and Chip are vying with each other for Needy’s time and attention.

Jennifer and Needy have been best friends since early childhood (“sandbox love,” as Needy calls it), and Jennifer doesn’t have much of an interest in supporting her friend’s romantic relationship. In the first conversation we see between them, Jennifer convinces Needy to ditch Chip and go to Low Shoulder’s show with her. In the next scene, Needy gets dressed to meet Jennifer’s specifications (“I could show my stomach but never my cleavage. Tits were her trademark.”), while Chip sullenly criticizes the low cut of her jeans from the background. Jennifer asks if they’ve been “fucking,” to which Needy giggles and calls her “gross.” Jennifer then indulges in some gloating as the two girls leave together. “You’re just jello because you’re not invited…” she tells Chip, “You’re lime green jello and you can’t even admit it to yourself.” “Stop kidnapping my girlfriend,” Chip responds helplessly. Chip’s insecurity about his standing with Needy is his Achilles heel. Jennifer isn’t able to seduce him as easily as Jonas or Colin, but she is able to lower his defenses by telling him that Needy cheated on him.

Jennifer sees the female body as a weapon. She tells Needy that her breasts are “like smart bombs: point them in the right direction and shit gets real.” Jennifer receives an array of powers when she comes back as a succubus, but also becomes more aggressive, both sexually and overall. She makes rude, callous comments about the Melody Lane Fire and its victims; she uses her beauty and sexuality to lure her victims into secluded areas where she can kill and eat them. It would only make sense that she would use her body as a weapon against Needy once the conflict between them surfaces. And the conflict between them is definitely eroticized, but their preexisting close relationship adds a layer of depth to the violence that is not present when Jennifer hunts her prey.

After resurrecting as a succubus, Jennifer shows up at Needy’s house, covered in blood but smiling at her friend (albeit creepily). I imagine that being sacrificed to the devil and coming back to earth as a demon would leave one a little punch-drunk, but considering that Jennifer recounts later that “[she] woke up and [she] found her way back to [Needy],” it could be a smile of relief to see her friend. She pushes Needy against a wall and nips at her neck, both alluring and terrifying. After she eats Colin, Jennifer turns up in Needy’s bed (literally) and tries to seduce her. Although Needy stops her, the scene is shot quite differently from Jennifer’s seduction of Jonas or Colin, or Needy and Chip’s sex scene. There’s no distracting humor, such as Chip’s inexperience in putting on a condom, or the wild animals that flock to Jennifer’s presence when she’s in seduction mode. Instead of dialogue or soundtrack, the sound cuts out completely. The sequence also includes extreme close-ups of their lips and backs. These factors all give their make out scene a more intimate, sensual tone than their sexual encounters with boys.

Jennifer’s reasons for trying to seduce Needy are never clearly outlined, but given that she had just fed on Colin and is at the height of her powers and confidence, it’s likely that she is reveling in her abilities by exerting control over Needy, or using their interaction as a celebratory indulgence. However, considering that this scene also includes her mentioning that they used to “play boyfriend-girlfriend,” and that Needy is active in their kissing before pushing Jennifer away, we are led to believe that there is some precedent in the two having sexual feelings for each other.

Even when Jennifer and Needy resort to physical violence with each other, their conflict has an erotic, and even romantic, subtext. When Needy tries to save Chip from being eaten, we get an exchange that is the closest the film comes to explicitly identifying either of them as bisexual. When Jennifer threatens to “eat [her] soul and shit it out,” Needy tells her, “I thought you only murdered boys.” “I go both ways,” Jennifer responds. This is a Diablo Cody script, smothered in sarcasm and quips, but given the prevalence of bisexual erasure, at least we have a little text to accompany the subtext.

Their final fight begins with Needy gazing through a bedroom window at Jennifer, reminiscent of a typically masculine fetishistic role of voyeur (and Jennifer’s role of hunter). They grapple with each other in bed: Needy straddles Jennifer, who calls her “butch” for using a box cutter as her weapon. Jennifer begins to use her powers to levitate, but when Needy sees the matching BFF necklace from Jennifer’s neck, she becomes vulnerable for a moment and they fall back to the mattress in an oddly sensual slow-motion shot. It’s only when Needy metaphorically stabs Jennifer through the heart that she gets the opportunity to literally do so as well. But even death can’t separate Jennifer and Needy from each other: Needy’s narration informs us during the denouement that some of Jennifer’s demon powers transferred to her when she was bitten during their final showdown. The end credits document a more powerful, vengeful Needy unleashing a satisfyingly bloody revenge on Low Shoulder.

Jennifer and Needy’s relationship is not a very healthy one, characterized by a power imbalance even before Jennifer gains her demonic abilities. The supernatural forces at play in Jennifer’s Body serve as a metaphor for Jennifer’s narcissism, as well as forcing the tension in their relationship to the surface. But even if their friendship isn’t allowing them to be their best selves, their love for each other proves to be the driving force in the film, giving the audience a level of emotional engagement deeper than a conflict for survival between a human and a force of evil. By giving attention both to what Needy and Jennifer want and pursue out of sexual relationships with boys and delving into the romantic and sexual component of their relationship with each other, the film gives enough space to their emotional lives to depict desire for characters of both same and other genders.

Films are imbued with amazing powers when they delve into female characters beyond the depictions of prey and love interests. In the case of Jennifer’s Body, LGBTQ audience members can see an aspect of themselves reflected on the screen.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Does Jennifer’s Body Turn the Possession Genre on Its Head?
Jennifer’s Body: The Sexuality of Female Possession and How the Devil Didn’t Need to Make Her Do It
From Ginger Snaps to Jennifer’s Body: The Contamination of Violent Women

Tessa Racked writes about depictions of fat people in cinema at Consistent Panda Bear Shape and displays Diablo Cody-level feats of wit on Twitter @tessa_racked.

From ‘Ginger Snaps’ to ‘Jennifer’s Body’: The Contamination of Violent Women

Thematically, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ mirrors ‘Ginger Snaps’ in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.

This guest post by Julia Patt appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

“Hell is a teenage girl.” So Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried) informs us in the opening voiceover monologue of Jennifer’s Body.

At first glance, it’s kind of a throwaway tagline sort of quote reminiscent of Mean Girls or Heathers. Teenage girls are the worst—they might even be evil, but just “high school evil,” to borrow another line from Diablo Cody’s highly quotable script for Jennifer’s Body. But we should note that the line isn’t, “The devil is a teenage girl” or “Teenage girls are demons.” Rather: “Hell is a teenage girl.” Which suggests not only evil, but also suffering. Teenage girls may make other people suffer but, more than that, they suffer profoundly themselves. And although Needy’s flashback indicates she’s thinking about her friend, Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), when she makes this observation, her present tense delivery and its placement in the script at least suggest the possibility that she’s also thinking about herself.

Megan Fox as Jennifer Check

Jennifer’s Body comes from a long, proud tradition of possession movies about women, particularly young women, from The Exorcist to Paranormal Activity. But given the conspicuous absence of old priests and young priests—indeed any mention of exorcism at all—the film’s closest analogue is, I’d argue, its pre-9/11 sister movie and cult werewolf flick, Ginger Snaps. Thematically, Jennifer’s Body mirrors Ginger Snaps in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.

Look familiar?

Ginger Snaps takes place in a Canadian suburb called Bailey Downs, where a mysterious creature, the Beast of Bailey Downs, has been picking off house pets, mainly dogs. The movie begins with the discovery of another such canine victim, but the attacks happen with enough frequency that, aside from the hysterical owner, no one bats an eye at this newest fatality. Other than the beast, the community is distressingly normal to the film’s two protagonists, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) Fitzgerald, who as children vowed to be “out by 16 or dead in this scene, but together forever.” Ginger at least appears to have opted for the latter option, as the sisters’ first scene together is a lengthy discussion and staging of various forms of suicide, which they put together as a photo slideshow for class. Although Ginger hails suicide as the “ultimate fuck you,” Brigitte is markedly less certain, worrying aloud that people will just laugh at her in her casket, her death having changed nothing.

Excellent show-and-tell project

There is of course much about the Fitzgerald sisters’ plan that conforms to the status quo. Suicide is an undeniably violent act, but it’s a self-directed violence, physically harming only the sisters and expected of women whom society views as predominantly nonviolent towards others. Given the abandonment of “out by 16,” it seems evident, too, that the sisters have succumbed to what they believe to be an inalterable, futile situation. They have no power to truly challenge the structures that make them so miserable. That is, until the Beast of Bailey Downs, a werewolf, attacks Ginger and she begins to change.

That the change happens simultaneously with puberty—her first menstrual cycle literally begins on the night she’s bitten—only heightens the sense of power Ginger now feels. Although still a weird Fitzgerald sister, her sexual appeal only increases throughout the movie until she fully transforms. This on its own is insufficient to manifest as a disruption. Ginger’s male classmates are only too happy to view her as a sexual object, albeit a slightly unsettling one. Even her confidence is unthreatening as long as it is confined to the context of their own desires. No, the difficulty is that Ginger remains unsatisfied and is no longer content to be so.

Unfortunately, nothing in this aisle for lycanthropy

In Jennifer’s Body, Needy and Jennifer play somewhat different roles in an otherwise familiar setting. Rural Devil’s Kettle, named for an unusual waterfall, may differ geographically from Bailey Downs but the sense of limitation and confinement remains. At the beginning of the film, Jennifer urges Needy to come to a concert with her because the band, Low Shoulder, is from the city. Her desire to leave Devil’s Kettle is evident in her enthusiasm, a fact Needy appears to wistfully recognize as they watch Low Shoulder perform at the local drinking hole. But Jennifer is no social outcast in the vein of the Fitzgerald sisters. She is, as Needy unnecessarily informs us, “a babe.” And though she characterizes herself as a dork in comparison, Needy herself hardly qualifies as a weirdo. “We were our yearbook photos,” she explains in her voiceover. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Hard to make Amanda Seyfried look “dorky” but they tried

Jennifer and Needy’s desires similarly do not disturb societal structures. Even Jennifer, extremely cognizant of her sexual powers, is ultimately unthreatening. She is not much of a party girl either, saying longingly at the bar: “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get trashed.” In other words, she plays by the rules. And despite her assertive attitude, willingness to manipulate men, and apparent confidence, the right sort of masculinity is enough to overcome her. This is painfully evident in her interactions with Nikolai, the lead singer of Low Shoulder, who continues to fascinate her, even after he insults Jennifer and the town.

Satanists with awesome haircuts

In fact, Nikolai brutally uses Jennifer’s desire for and idealization of the outside world against her. After a fire breaks out in the bar, killing several people, she and Needy flee through the bathroom window. Outside, Nikolai finds them and leads Jennifer away to the band’s van—the last time Needy will see her alive, as the members of Low Shoulder intend to sacrifice her in exchange for their commercial success. (It’s a hard world for an indie band. They’re just all so pretty.) When Jennifer appears again, covered in blood, she is possessed by a demon—and as with Ginger, her desires can no longer be sated by ordinary means. As Devil’s Kettle becomes a place of tragedy, Jennifer transforms into an agent of gleeful destruction, lusting not for attention or boys or society dictates for a teenage girl, but rather for power, violence, and fear.

The new Jennifer doesn’t care about gender roles

Ginger comes to a similar conclusion about her longing. “I get this ache,” she confesses to Brigitte. “I thought it was for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces.” This conflation between sex and violence is hardly unique to Ginger Snaps or Jennifer’s Body, but the emphasis on female sexuality and female power subvert our expectations in the violent scenes. Nor are these neat, orderly killings—both Ginger and Jennifer tear open and partially consume their victims. These films are bloody and that blood belongs almost exclusively to men. Of the two, Ginger is much more erratic in her selection of victims, striking out mostly at male authority figures as they threaten her. This is fitting for her affliction and the gradual nature of her change, which, in an unusual twist on the werewolf trope, happens over the course of the month until the full moon instead of all in one night.

Jennifer, conversely, makes a full transition to her new undead, possessed state of being although her feeding patterns notably also occur on a monthly schedule as the life forces of her victims wane. As a hungry demon, as Needy points out, Jennifer appears remarkably like a woman in the throws of PMS: “She gets weak and cranky and ugly.” Being full, Jennifer explains, is an incredible high—and she’s basically indestructible. It’s no wonder that each month she seduces and consumes another boy after the juice from the last runs out. Externally, this does not manifest as a large behavioral shift. Jennifer is flirty, appealing, and deliberately submissive as she lures in her next meal. The difference is she no longer figuratively attains her sense of self-worth from her conquests—they are literally making her more beautiful and powerful.

Confidence is terrifying

We can understand why Ginger and Jennifer become so insatiable and simultaneously why their hunger appears so monstrous in the context of patriarchal society. Their love of killing makes them a serious threat. It’s the full realization of their powers and the traditional means by which they might be subdued—control over their self-image, social standing or physical wellbeing—no longer work. For the first time in their lives, both are completely uninhibited. They are free to want. There is something almost laudable about their transformations, too; they’ve gone from almost certain victims to powerful killers. And it’s all the more telling that we can characterize both films as macabre comedies as well as horror flicks; they are often as funny as they are frightening and their delight in the upending of social convention is palpable.

But it is the way of horror that normalcy often reasserts itself and the monster is destroyed. In the case of both Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body, the agent of that destruction is not a man but another teenage girl—and not just any girl, but a literal or metaphorical sister.

Inseparable…until one of us gets bitten by a werewolf

Ginger’s relationship with her sister remains the only reliable element in her life, although her encroaching transformation certainly strains it, as she abandons, threatens, and ignores her at various turns. It’s clear from the outset that their relationship has always been one of distinct inequality with Ginger as the leader and Brigitte the follower. Brigitte, who grows more assertive as the story progresses, is determined to find a cure for her sister’s condition and teams up with local drug dealer and apparent lycanthrope enthusiast Sam. However, this new alliance irritates Ginger, who as they go to consult with him drolly remarks, “Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo?” In fact, although there is real affection at the heart of their relationship, Ginger is undeniably possessive and jealous regarding Brigitte, accusing even the school’s elderly janitor of checking out her sister and then killing him in a fit of werewolf-induced rage. Neither is it accidental that Sam becomes her intended target, as she first attempts to seduce him and then attacks him when that fails. However, she does not target Brigitte until the very end of the film, at which point Brigitte resigns herself to killing Ginger in self-defense.

There are striking similarities in the relationship between Needy and Jennifer. Jennifer is often possessive and controlling of the weaker-willed and aptly named Needy. But they genuinely care for one another, as Needy observes, because, “Sandbox love never dies.” Despite her altered state, Jennifer avoids harming her friend, even when the demon inside her would clearly be glad to rip her to pieces, too. Instead, Jennifer settles for consuming the boys around Needy, including her goth friend, Colin, and her boyfriend, Chip. This last murder drives Needy to finally take action against Jennifer and the two exchange barbed insults in two confrontations that eventually result in Jennifer’s death. Needy flatly exposes Jennifer’s insecurities, revealing a dynamic that has subtly developed over the course of the film: Needy is the stronger and more capable of the two.

Jennifer confides in Needy

It is tempting to read these two endings as a reassertion of patriarchal values in the vein of conservative horror: the well-behaved, sensible girl saves the day and survives to tell the tale while the sex-crazed, uninhibited female monster is destroyed. This is accurate but for two facts: the tragedy of our two heroines and the contagion of violence. Brigitte and Needy are devastated by what they have to do, both visibly mourning the women they loved. For them, these moments are personal, not political. It’s worth asking if they would have intervened at all had Ginger and Jennifer ranged farther afield. Both look for other solutions; both permit at least one person to die despite what they know; both keep the confidences given to them. At the end of Ginger Snaps, Brigitte leans over the body of her transformed sister and sobs; having killed Jennifer, Needy is broken, bitter, and changed, spending her days in a mental health institution for criminals. Neither looks much like a heroine of the patriarchy; neither returns to the strictures of society.

Not so Needy anymore

And both are marked in more significant ways. Brigitte deliberately infects herself to gain Ginger’s cooperation. Jennifer scratches Needy as they struggle, thus communicating some of her demonic powers to her friend, a fact Needy reveals at the end of the film as she levitates out of solitary confinement and escapes. Although Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed show us more of Brigitte’s fate—which also involves institutionalization—it’s unclear at the end of the first movie what the outcome of her infection will be. Jennifer’s Body gives us rather more, because Needy has one thing on her mind: revenge. The closing credits of the film reveal the gruesome deaths of Low Shoulder, and security footage shows Needy strolling towards their hotel room, her intent unmistakable.

Brigitte and Needy’s reactions remind us what we might forget over the course of these films: both Ginger and Jennifer are victims. They did not intentionally become what they are. But their survival makes them strong, even as it changes them in other more horrific ways. Those changes and that power are, the films seem to suggest, communicable. And despite their destruction, something of what they’ve gained persists in the women who love them and survive. Although the immediate threat may have passed, the possibility for further violence lingers.

Julia Patt is a writer from Maryland. She also edits 7×20, a journal of twitter literature, and is a regular contributor to VProud.tv and tatestreet.org. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/chidorme

Portrait of the Dead Girl: Victim, Saint, and Enigma of the Crime Narrative

More often than not, the victim of violent crime in film and TV is a woman. With your average procedural, almost every episode features a woman who has been raped or one who has been raped and murdered. In real life, women are disproportionately the victims of violent crimes and these stories increase awareness of the physical and psychological aftermath faced by these women, their friends and family and society.
However, by positioning a narrative to begin with the victim already dead and voiceless, she is only that, a victim in the story, never allowed to become a person.

More often than not, the victim of violent crime in film and TV is a woman. With your average procedural, take for instance, Law and Order: SVU, almost every episode features a woman who has been raped or one who has been raped and murdered. In real life, women are disproportionately the victims of violent crimes and these stories increase awareness of the physical and psychological aftermath faced by these women, their friends and family, and society.

However, by positioning a narrative to begin with the victim already dead and voiceless, she is only that, a victim in the story, never allowed to become a person. This structure also creates distance, so the viewer is less likely to identify with the dead girl and feel true fear and sympathy for experiences.

The exploitation of the her person and body is also seen as evidence of sexism in the crime narrative. As in horror movies where the murders of women are more graphic and garner more screen time then those of men, the dead girl usually suffers extreme sexual violence and disfigurement, which are shot it graphic, loving detail. The crime scene or crime scene photographs are frequently shown and her suffering is discussed at length in near fetishistic tones.

Twin Peaks begins with the discovery of Laura, dead and wrapped in plastic

There is an appeal to the public imagination in the image of a beautiful young woman in peril, particularly a young, white women known to be popular among her peers and viewed as sweetly, saintly, and virginal. The much-loved cult TV show, Twin Peaks, originally centered around the investigation of the murder of beautiful, blue-eyed blonde Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and promotion for the series depended on viewers’ investment in the mystery of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” When The Killing premiered in 2011, its advertisements asking, “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” were clearly influenced by Twin Peaks.

Along with the evocative question, the series was known for two iconic images of Laura, the dead girl, that stand in for the show in popular imagination: the homecoming portrait, which shows her rosy cheeked and smiling, and her dead body, fished out of the water wrapped in plastic, shades of gray and blue. The central importance of the portrait, which hangs at Laura’s high school as well as her family home, was inspired for the 1944 Otto Preminger film, Laura, where a detective fixates on the portrait of a glamorous murdered ad-exec and falls in love with her through it (luckily, it’s a case of mistaken identity and Laura’s not really dead).

Viewers so latched onto the idea of Laura Palmer, that actress Sheryl Lee, originally brought on to appear in a few scenes in the pilot, made reoccurring appearances in flashbacks as Laura and regular appearances as Laura’s look-a-like cousin Maddie Ferguson, as well as starring in the prequel film after the series ended.

In early episodes of the show, it’s suggested that lead investigator FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has romantic feelings towards her and has a dream/prophetic vision of a seductive Laura, sitting with him in a mysterious red room. At the end of the dream, she whispers in his ear the identity of her killer. Though Cooper forgets what she said upon waking, his eventual memory of her words gives him certainty of her murderer’s identity. A victim of incestuous rape, abuse, and murder at the hands of her father, Leland (with an ancient demonic spirit, BOB, inside him–or something), Laura is allowed the satisfying and cathartic opportunity to name her killer and help to catch him.

In the fantasy of the series, this room is described as a sort of way-station to the afterlife, a refuge between good and evil and a part of the dangerous realm of pure evil, the Black Lodge, that holds onto human souls while demons walk the earth in their bodies, so Cooper’s dream is not in fact a dream, but Laura’s first opportunity to speak for herself. Before her death, she wrote in her secret diary (different from her regular diary) about her dream of this same encounter with Cooper.

After her death, the dead girl’s reputation is often changed according to the flawed Madonna/whore dichotomy and her neighbors, family, and peers come to realize she was not the person they thought she was. In procedurals, boyfriends learn their girlfriends had other lovers, and parents learn their daughters had sex lives. Though it’s rare, sometimes there’s the opposite revelation, as the boyfriend who murdered his girlfriend for cheating learns she was always faithful.

When Laura’s body is found in the series, most people in town know her only as the Homecoming Queen, a model for the perfect American teenage girl. Early on, she shows up in flashbacks and home videos, kidding around with her best friend and smiling lovingly at her boyfriend (himself introduced as the perfect American teenage boy). However, as her murder is investigated, the people of Twin Peaks come to see a darker side of Laura, mired in sex, drugs and a heretofore unknown seedy underbelly of their picturesque little town. As Laura is no longer around, and the abuse she had suffered are originally unknown, her reputation is tarnished in the eyes of many townsfolk and she is unable to give any sort of explanation to the people who would condemn her.

Sheryl Lee also played Laura’s cousin Maddie, who meets a similar fate

The duality of Laura is suggested through the character of dark-haired identical cousin Maddie Ferguson. Maddie is everything Laura was not–innocent, naive and close to her family. While Laura is glamorous and sexual, making coy recordings for her therapist and advertising herself in adult magazines, Maddie is mousy and eager to please. Becoming more like Laura (by ditching her glasses and taking more control of her sexuality) gets Maddie killed as Leland mistakes Maddie for Laura.

Though there are other readings of the duality of Sheryl Lee’s two characters, it is easy to see them as Madonna and whore. Unusually for the trope of identical cousins, where the blonde is commonly presented as good and the brunette as bad, Twin Peaks suggests Maddie is the embodiment of goodness and purity. By contrast, Laura, a victim of rape and abuse, has one foot in darkness and is revealed to have had sex or sexualized dynamics with almost everyone she interacted with.

In addition, Laura questions her own goodness and independently seeks out a therapist to help cope. In her last week alive, she quits her position heading up the Twin Peaks Meals-on-Wheels program, suggesting she has given up on trying to help others. In the prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me , it is clear she feels unworthy of salvation, as she tells Donna she believes the angels have abandoned her and she will burn forever. Later on, she watches as angels disappear from a painting in front of her.

This storyline, though suggestive of the self-loathing felt by abuse victims, makes the unfortunate implication that the abuse Laura has suffered has made her a bad person, or at least lesser than Maddie.

Laura realizes she is not a bad person when an angel appears to her in the red room after her death

The film allows Laura to emerge on the other side, in the Black Lodge’s mysterious red room, to see her own angel waiting for her. It ends with her smiling and laughing, assured that being abused did not “corrupt” her or make her undeserving of love, a great relief after watching her suffering throughout the TV series and film.

Focusing on the last week of Laura’s life with her as the main character, Fire Walk With Me has dark undertones of hagiography, the story of the life of a saint, as it revels in her suffering, allowing it to elevate her and cast her as a hero for enduring. It also gives her a chance to speak and show viewers who she was in her private moments, reconciling the two opposing views of her as both a saintly meals-on-wheels volunteer and cocaine-addicted prostitute into a complete person.

Perhaps what endears viewers to the dead girl as a character is our culture’s glorification of female victims, specifically for being tragic and fragile. In an essay at Rookie, Sady Doyle writes, “We love Laura Palmer, wrapped in plastic and bright blue, tortured and murdered just as surely as good St. Dymphna.” Accordingly, many dramatic teenage girls look to women like Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe as heroes, not for their achievements but for the glamor and depths they see as going along with pain.

However, the film can also be criticized for its unflinching portrayal of the graphic violence visited on Laura and her friend Ronette Pulaski. They are shown tied up, screaming and bleeding, while they are brutalized for extended sequences. At one point, Laura is forced to look at her face in a mirror while she is raped, suggesting her abuser wants to make it impossible for her to pretend to be anywhere else or that this is not happening to her.

In her last moments, Laura is forced to watch her own abuse

There are a lot of reasons fans of the series disliked Fire Walk With Me; most wanted more time with the kooky inhabitants of Twin Peaks and missed its quirky moments. The film is much darker and more violent then the series and almost entirely lacking in comedy. Though it has David Lynch’s trademark surreal touches, the story at its heart is also much more real. The film forces viewers to try to understand the horror Laura has gone through as a victim of incest and abuse, how the Palmer house has become her own private hell and she has watched her death draw nearer, sure it would come for her soon. With this in mind, the film is harrowing and difficult to watch, but its existence is integral to the understanding of Laura’s character as a developed character and complex human being. The release of a book, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, intended to be the character’s diary discovered on the show, has a similar effect. It was a best seller, particularly remembered among people who were teenage girls at the time of its release.

Fire Walk with Me is often hard to watch due to Laura’s suffering at the hands of her father

The dead girl continues to be popular figure in crime narratives, though some more recent examples have tried to give her a voice in interesting ways. In the TV procedural Cold Case, the murdered character in each episode was shown in flashbacks throughout the episode, following him/her right until the moment of the murder. However, these flashbacks, and those on several other procedurals with similar narrative styles, are the memories of living characters, filtered through their perception of the events, rather than the way things were experienced by the victim. At the end of each Cold Case episode, the dead character’s ghost appears to watch their loved ones, allowing them a slight voice in the narrative, as if set free by the discovery of the killer.

The dead girl’s ghost hovering around postmortem and giving advice on the investigation is a storyline that’s been used on almost every fantasy series, from Buffy to Charmed. Unlike these stories, where the existence of something supernatural is undisputed, crime narratives often use the ghostly figure of the dead girl to suggest the inner workings of the protagonist’s mind. In the first season of Veronica Mars, the titular character’s (Kristen Bell) murdered best friend, Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried), often appears to her. Like Laura Palmer, Lilly managed to become one of show’s most beloved and enigmatic characters with minimal screen time.

Lilly appears to Veronica in the clothes she was wearing when she died, still bleeding from her head wound

Lilly appears to Veronica to comment on how much she has changed since Lilly’s death, becoming tougher and wiser and to give cryptic hints. In one scene, Veronica sees her out of the corner of her eye, running around the Kane house and leading Veronica to the scene of the crime.

She appears in several flashbacks and at the end of many episodes, in Veronica’s imagining of the murder taking place as she entertains new suspects.

Her appearance is also used as a reward for Veronica after she finally solves Lilly’s murder at the end of the season, when she imagines herself in paradise, lying in a pool full of flowers with Lilly. Lilly’s final appearance is in Veronica’s dream at the end of season 2, as the marker of what Veronica’s life could have been like if she wasn’t murdered. The scene doesn’t successfully give Lilly as voice as it focuses on how Veronica would have been different, not on the tragedy of what Lilly would have been able to experience if she had lived and will now never be able to.

Veronica imagines Lilly set free by the arrest of her killer, allowed to relax in paradise

The posthumous narrator is a rare and interesting devices, used most memorably in American Beauty and Sunset Boulevard, where murdered characters look back on their lives. As it’s already a rare concept, a posthumous female narrator is even more rare. A notable example, The Lovely Bones, focuses on Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan)’s family trying to rebuild after her death, rather than the search for her killer. Her murderer is not caught, either with her ghostly help or without, but is punished only by his own accidental death.

The dead girl is an interesting figure in the landscape of crime fiction–one who can easily become a victim or a caricature. Experiments with flashbacks, fantasy, dreamworlds, and narration are intriguing ways to give her a voice and return some humanity to her and the real life victims she mirrors.

See also on Bitch Flicks:

Hannibal’s Feminist Take on Horror Still Has a High Female Body Count

A Review in Conversation of Twin Peaks

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

An Emotional Response to ‘Lovelace’

Amanda Seyfried as “Linda Lovelace”

This is a guest post by Gabriella Apicella.

When was the last time you cried in a movie theatre? The last time you were so moved by a film you needed everyone else to leave before ungluing yourself from the seat and attempting to process what you’ve experienced? Or the last time you saw something that made you feel that if enough people saw it, the world could be changed for the better?

None of these things happen to me too often, but this evening while watching Lovelace, I experienced all three.

I’ve been following the release of this film with some interest. As a dedicated feminist with a fiercely anti-porn stance, I was certainly not expecting anything particularly groundbreaking when I saw the movie posters plastered on the walls of my local underground station. Showing an objectified Amanda Seyfried in a lacy bra with wide eyes and an innocent pout, I very quickly assumed this would be a film for me to try and forget existed (much like the endless Fast and Furious rehashes). And then I heard that Gloria Steinem and Catherine Mackinnon were involved. For those who hadn’t heard, they were both consultants on the film, in their roles as caretakers of Linda Boreman Marchiano’s estate.

Linda Boreman Marchiano (aka Linda Lovelace)

(This excellent article by Catherine Mackinnon explains a bit more about their involvement and is well worth reading.)

Dreadful acts of abuse feature all too regularly on our screens. Even on television it has become increasingly common to see ever more graphic gore and sadistic violence. As Lovelace has an 18 certificate (equivalent to R in the US) and being superficially familiar with the story beforehand, I had braced myself for a barrage of scarring images, expertly shot and edited and due to reappear in my nightmares for weeks to come. This is one of the quandaries that I have wondered about as a screenwriter – how to depict scenes of distressing acts without compromising your viewer, or making them complicit with the abuse, or, in fact, abusing them as well. However, it may be that by their sensitive and elegant handling, the filmmakers of Lovelace have actually revolutionised an area of storytelling that has prevented some of the most shocking and distressing yet crucially important films from either being made or from being seen.

The film intelligently portrays a great deal of what Linda Boreman Marchiano experienced and yet does not subject the audience to the horror. Not only does this make it a safer viewing experience, it also puts the audience’s emotional identification with the protagonist first. Linda remains a whole character throughout rather than becoming a body upon which hideous acts are carried out. We do not shift into passive voyeur or spectator, as traumatising scenes in The Accused, Monster, Straw Dogs, Irreversible, or any number of other films depicting domestic and sexual violence force the audience to do.

Adam Brody and Amanda Seyfried in Lovelace

One of the defending arguments the Director Michael Winterbottom employed when graphically depicting the violent beating of both female characters in his film, The Killer Inside Me was that:

“It was intentionally shocking. The whole point of the story is, here is someone who is supposed to be in love with two women who he beats to death, and of course the violence should be shocking. If you make a film where the violence is entertaining, I think that’s very questionable.”

What Lovelace opens up is the possibility that it is not actually necessary to show violence – shocking, entertaining or otherwise, in order to interrogate these issues on film.

For people affected by domestic or sexual abuse and violence, either personally or otherwise, films about these subjects are of huge interest. The matters are of enormous concern, and knowing the power of the media, it is only natural that these same people would wish to watch any major productions tackling these issues. And yet, viewing violence onscreen has the potential to trigger traumatic responses, so this same audience frequently stays away from this material and is thereby excluded from the conversations (as if they need to be silenced any more than they are already!)

Amanda Seyfriend as Linda Boreman Marchiano in Lovelace

As I attempt to process the devastating story of Linda Boreman Marchiano, only a fraction of which is actually covered in the film Lovelace (her activism and later years are not depicted), I am struck by the excellent performances, my enduring loathing for uber-pimp Hugh Hefner, and the exceptional influence of two feminist icons on the making of this important film.

What kept me sobbing in my seat throughout the credits and for some time in the lobby after the film, however, was the knowledge that this is not a one-off case, nor was it the worst case scenario. Porn has grown in both financial terms and in the levels of violence and degradation performers endure. What Linda experienced was horrifying. It continues, on an industrialised scale, and yet we are so very far from ensuring the safety of those who are exploited by it. Linda Boreman Marchiano’s mission was to raise awareness around domestic violence and the realities of the porn industry so that people who are being abused can reach safety. As part of realising her legacy, I urge you to watch this film and take a skeptical friend: they may just start to think differently after seeing it …

Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Les Misérables’: Some Musicals Are More Feminist Than Others

Guest post written by Natalie Wilson, originally published at Ms. Magazine. Cross-posted with permission.

While Les Misérables is not your typical musical–or, as this Guardian review puts it, “There’s no dancing, there are no jazz hands and there is next to no speech”–it is typical of the genre in that, like opera, it includes more female characters than do many plays, movies and novels. Regardless if this is due to the fondness for female voices or to the swoon-inducing love ballads adored by so many, this viewer is thankful for the diverse female characters so wonderfully played by Anne Hathaway(Fantine), Amanda Seyfriend (Cosette), Samantha Barks (Éponine) and Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thénardier).

The film adaptation, based on the musical (seen by over 60 million people), which is itself based on Victor Hugo’s novel, arguably heightens the proto-feminist elements of the original narrative as it allows for a more close-up, more harrowing depiction of the key female characters, all of whom are “miserable” for justifiable reasons.

Though the film has been referred to as a “lobotomized opera,” it can more aptly be described as an operatic musical that not only focuses on macro problems of human existence–morality, freedom, power, forgiveness–but also on how these problems play out at the micro level, particularly how the macro power of men effects women on a micro level. As noted at Democratic Underground, Victor Hugo gets:

“…the plight of women in his society, especially the grisettes (working class young women) and prostitutes, and how they were helpless against not just men of power, but men in general, and how nice poor girls could so easily be discarded and have [their lives] ruined because of becoming pregnant or rebuffing sexual advances.”

Fantine is the key character to have her life ruined in such a manner. Abandoned by the man who impregnates her, she is working in the 19th century version of a sweatshop when we first meet her in the film. She ultimately turns to sexual slavery so as to continue sending money to the unscrupulous caretakers (the Thénardiers) who, unbeknowst to her, are abusing and exploiting her young daughter, Cosette.

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables

Fantine is portrayed sympathetically in the text and musical, but the film adaptation emphasizes the horrors of forced prostitution, something the musical renditions of the song “Lovely Ladies” frequently belie. Often performed in an upbeat, jokey manner, in the film the song instead becomes a battle cry against sexual slavery, with the costuming, make-up, sets and lighting bringing the horrors behind the lyrics to life as the sickly, starving, cold, tattered and abused women sing:

Lovely ladies
Ready for the call
Standing up or lying down
Or any way at all
Bargain prices up against the wall

After her hair has been cut, her teeth removed and sold, Fantine joins the song, singing,

Come on, Captain
You can wear your shoes
Don’t it make a change
To have a girl who can’t refuse
Easy money
Lying on a bed
Just as well they never see
The hate that’s in your head
Don’t they know they’re making love
To one already dead!

Widely lauded in the role (as here, here, and here), her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” further encapsulates the pathos and desperation of her character–something which is sometimes lost in more “Broadway” renditions of the song (a la Susan Boyle).

Of playing Fantine, Anne Hathaway notes,

“What I did was I tried to get inside the reality of her story as it exists in our world. … I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of documentaries and news clips about sexual slavery. And for me, for this particular story, I came to the realization that I had been thinking about Fantine as someone who lived in the past, but she doesn’t. She’s living in New York City right now. She’s probably less than a block away. This injustice exists in our world, and so every day that I was her, I just thought—this isn’t an invention. This isn’t me acting. This is me honoring that this pain lives in this world and I hope that in all our lifetimes — like, today — we see it end.”

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables

Regardless of what can be said about Hathaway’s weight loss for the role (critiqued here), her framing of Fantine as a sexual slave, NOT a prostitute, is key, as it refuses to glorify or joke about what is so often swept under the rug regarding sex work: that the majority of women do not “choose” it but are forced into it–a realization emphasized by Hugo but often lost in musical renditions. Hugo writes of Fantine,

“What is the history of Fantine? It is society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, from loneliness, from abandonment, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a bit of bread. Misery makes the offer, society accepts … it is said that slavery has disappeared from the European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists: but it weighs now only upon woman, and it is called prostitution.”

The film, like Hugo’s novel, blames society for sexual slavery, rather than individual men or women. Each also portrays her “choice” as that between life and death for her and her daughter.

Hugo’s progressive view of sexual politics, as well as his critical attitude towards “polite society” (discussed here) imbue his work in other Les Mis plotlines as well–as with his depiction of the vengeful Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) and the valiant prisononer 24601, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), imprisoned 19 years for the crime of stealing bread. Though these two males are at the center of the story, the females are just as (if not more) memorable (and certainly outperform and out-sing Crowe in his bombastic version of Javert).

Amanda Seyfried as Cosette in Les Miserables

Cosette, both as the child abused by the Thénardiers and then as the adult who falls for the revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne), is also a micro picture of a macro problem — the abuse of female children, especially those in foster care and/or poverty, and the fact that one of the few “escapes” offered to such women is love and romance. The same “escape” is the only one that similarly maltreated Eponine is forced into. As noted here, she is “Raised by sociopathic parents and then forced into a life of poverty and crime” and “only wants the man she loves to love her, and sacrifices all to prove her love.”

Samanta Barks as Eponine in Les Miserables

The Funny Feminist takes issue with this plotline in particular, noting that Eponine has sadly become “the international spokeswoman for girls crushing on their male best friends, who swoon over the richer, more popular girl.” Like a 19th century Bella Swan, Eponine is hopelessly devoted to her Edward, in the form of Marius, but he only has eyes for Cosette. If the musical falters in its quasi-feminist politics anywhere, it is here, with the strong , resilient Eponine belting out her song of unrequited love, “On My Own,” while the male revolutionaries prepare to fight for a more egalitarian France–or, as the Funny Feminist puts it “when the poor folk rally against the 1 percent and the Mitt Romneys,” Eponine is busy singing a “pity me, my life is so sad” song. To be fair, while she is indeed lovestruck, she also disguises herself as a boy in order to join in the revolution, and ultimately gives her life to save Marius.

While some reviews slam the film for not being political enough, as here (where the film is described as “a picturesque 19th-century version of Occupy Wall Street” lacking political context), I would counter that the film drips with politics, especially the micro politics captured in the feminist mantra “the personal is political.” From the tragic Fantine to the orphaned Cosette to the maltreated Eponine, the film depicts a story that is still all too true, and does so better than any musical version I’ve seen, showing that women–revolution or no–are all too often beaten, abused, exploited, raped and murdered. While it’s long ranked as one of my favorite musicals, it now holds the number one spot in this feminist heart for best musical film ever.

———-

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

‘Les Miserables’: The Feminism Behind the Barricades

Written by Leigh Kolb

Feminist ethics typically defines feminist philosophy as focusing on morality and relationships and not just traditionally masculine justice.

While Les Miserables features female characters who do exist largely to save men, this larger feminism vs. patriarchy dilemma is at work between the ideologies of Jean Valjean and Javert.

A Washington Post writer bemoaned how anti-feminist Les Mis truly is, with its stereotypical women who “exist not to drive the plot but to sacrifice for the men, the real stars of the show.” She refers to them as “bit players” in the musical, and notices that the women are all “abused” and “marginalized.” Yet as a feminist, she can’t help but love it.

While the female characters indeed do suffer to save men, there is much more at play in this film (an adaptation of the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel).

From the very beginning, we know that the hero’s journey belongs to Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), and that his path of self-realization will be the heart of the plot. After being “saved” by a compassionate priest, he vows to change himself (literally and figuratively, as his convict papers limited his employment possibilities). Eight years later, he has a new name and is mayor of a new town and a factory owner.

Fantine (Anne Hathaway) is a worker in a factory when she is introduced to the audience. The group of women–in sweatshop conditions–sing “At the End of the Day.” The lyrics showcase poverty, a lecherous foreman, hungry children and dismal working conditions. Fantine is fired for hiding that she has a child (the assumption is that she is immoral, which her co-workers pounce on). Valjean does not fight the foreman to keep her employed, and she is fired.

Fantine, in pink, works to support her child.

Fantine is the ultimate suffering mother, and Hathaway does a remarkable job at portraying her suffering when she chooses (out of necessity) to sell her hair, necklace, teeth and body. “I Dreamed a Dream” was incredible, especially considering the actors sang live during filming. Fantine’s plight is clearly the fault of awful men–the man who impregnated and then left her, the abusive foreman, the disgusting johns–she is a fighting victim, and she has the audience’s sympathies.

When Valjean saves Fantine from Javert (Russell Crowe), who was arresting her because he believed her abusive customer over her, and takes her to the hospital, he realizes that he’d let this happen, albeit passively, and pledges to take care of her daughter.

Fantine’s transformation into a dying prostitute.

Valjean realizes that he hadn’t done what he should have in the first place, and makes up for it (this is really Valjean in a nutshell). Unlike the strict Javert, who lives rigidly within a patriarchal code of justice, Valjean’s morality grows and evolves, as he questions himself and the world around him.

The film introduces a new song, “Suddenly,” placed after Valjean rescues Cosette from the Thenardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, in roles that seem made for them). As she sleeps, he expresses her transformative effect on him. Having a child gives him new hope and life. He sings, “Suddenly I see / What I could not see / Something suddenly / Has begun.” This stereotypically feminine maternal love for a child changes Valjean.

Cosette and Valjean save one another other.

Javert identifies Valjean by his brute strength, because that is all he can see in his fight for black and white justice.

In “Stars,” Javert’s ode to order and righteousness, he subscribes to a religion that is authoritative and patriarchal. His views of justice contrast Valjean’s and are deeply rooted in traditional masculinity. Valjean’s religion is about grace, empathy and compassion, and his justice is not about man’s law, but about morality and care–typically feminine virtues.

Javert, after the revolt.

Many of us fell deeply in love with Les Mis as young girls and “tweens,” and the plights of Cosette dreaming about a castle on a cloud, or Eponine longing for someone in a different world who doesn’t love her back, tugged on our pubescent heartstrings. The music never ceases being beautiful, but as we get older, we understand the larger implications of Fantine’s suffering, Valjean’s existential crises and Javert’s clinging to justice without morality.

The class issues that drive the story are introduced with Valjean and Fantine, and come to a head with the revolt led by university students against the injustice of poverty. Eponine’s (Samantha Barks) unrequited love for Marius (Eddie Redmayne) is painful, but she is still a strong female character. She leads Marius to Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and fights behind the barricades. The film shows her binding her breasts during “One Day More,” and when she pulls the rifle away from Marius so she is shot, the audience sees it up close. She’s sacrificial, obviously, but independent and strong, doing what she needs to do for her community, herself and Marius. Her plight symbolizes an oppressive system of social classes more than it does weak womanhood.

Eponine, a victim of poverty, terrible parents and unrequited love.

When Gavroche sings about “little people,” and is eventually killed, he also is a symbol of the evils of oppression.

Cosette and Marius are equally smitten with one another (no games, no desperation). When Valjean learns about their love for one another, he’s in the midst of wanting to flee to get away from Javert. When he hears of the revolt, he goes, largely to protect Marius. He doesn’t know Marius, but he knows his daughter loves him, and that’s enough. He pleads with God to “bring him (Marius) home,” and protect him. When Marius is shot, Valjean saves him anonymously. He loves Cosette so much that he is willing to risk his life for a man who she loves, and he trusts her judgment. Women aren’t the only sacrificial figures here.

Valjean has the opportunity to kill Javert, but refuses. Javert commits suicide when he is faced with an inner conflict that he can’t resolve. Javert sings:

“Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief!

Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase.

I am the Law and the Law is not mocked

I’ll spit his pity right back in his face

There is nothing on earth that we share

It is either Valjean or Javert!”

This dualistic view of mankind’s nature and society loses–at its own hand. Valjean’s morality overcomes Javert’s strict code of justice.

When Marius and Cosette reunite in “Every Day,” Valjean sings “She was never mine to keep / She is youthful / She is free.” This epiphany should lift up any feminist’s heart, because that’s a pretty refreshing thing to hear from someone, much less a 19th-century father.

Marius and Cosette.

After they are married, Cosette and Marius find Valjean (who has exiled himself again and is staying in a convent). Valjean gives Cosette a letter with his life story, and as he’s dying, he sees Fantine and the priest and goes toward them.

The ending is a gorgeous reprise of “Do You Hear the People Sing,” as Valjean goes toward an enormous barricade and sees all those who have died. While there has been a great deal of loss throughout the film, this ending is uplifting. The message is that love has prevailed–platonic love, familial love and romantic love.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines feminist ethics as questioning traditional ethics:

“…traditional ethics overrates culturally masculine traits like ‘independence, autonomy, intellect, will, wariness, hierarchy, domination, culture, transcendence, product, asceticism, war, and death,’ while it underrates culturally feminine traits like ‘interdependence, community, connection, sharing, emotion, body, trust, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace, and life’ … it favors ‘male’ ways of moral reasoning that emphasize rules, rights, universality, and impartiality over ‘female’ ways of moral reasoning that emphasize relationships, responsibilities, particularity, and partiality (Alison Jagger, ‘Feminist Ethics’).”

Javert clearly embodies traditional, masculine traits and an obsession with rules. Valjean, on the other hand, grows into a sympathetic hero by developing a more feminine morality (putting a priority on connection, questioning hierarchy, working for peace and developing relationships). Valjean is our hero.

While Javert’s Christianity drives his actions (he sings “Mine is the way of the Lord” in “Stars”), Valjean’s stumbling toward Christianity is more authentic and is portrayed as preferable, with a focus on forgiveness, sacrifice and giving. As he’s dying, he sings along with the ghost of Fantine, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” This is the truth we’re supposed to walk away with–not the truth of laws and authority, but the truth of emotional vulnerability and mercy.

The women of Les Miserables suffer and sacrifice for men, and their plights certainly propel the men’s stories. Cosette, who is more one-dimensional than the other women, survives and thrives. She had the privilege of having a good parent and being in love, which again shows the importance of good relationships.

The only way, then, that Les Miserables could be anti-feminist is if Javert and his worldview had won. But he doesn’t; instead, the audience is supposed to celebrate what are often considered culturally feminine traits and morality. Les Miserables is critical of social injustice, poverty and oppression. And at the end of the day, that sounds like feminism.

The barricades are erected and are triumphant at the end of the film.

—

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Horror Week 2012: Portrait of the Artist as the Demon’s Best Friend Forever

Jennifer’s Body (2009)

This is a guest post from Erin Blackwell.

Jennifer’s Body, the 2009 horror chick-flick that was a coming-of-age for sex goddess Megan Fox after hyper-lucrative, career-building toil under the aegis of Michael Bay’s teenage-boy-centric Transformers franchise, now enjoys a cult following outside the Transformers demographic. And yet, on release, Jennifer’s Body was widely panned by reviewers who were oddly outraged by its unworthiness. (Maybe they were bought off, but that would be another story.)

Maybe the male critics and audience somehow sensed this was the break-up film. Simultaneous to its release, Fox untied her tongue in interviews, famously comparing the Transformers director to Hitler, a salvo that sealed her fate with the franchise and, at least initially, its fans. They felt betrayed.

Megan Fox as Jennifer

They were right, they had been betrayed: by their own phallocentric delusion that women exist to serve men, and its tributary delusion that Megan Fox enjoyed performing the objectified sidekick to Shia LeBoeuf’s action hero, and more poignantly, that she intuited from the far side of the screen how hot she made them, each guy individually, and that meant something to her beyond a sense of power and a pay check. She was their admission-priced, inaccessible, fantasy, group girlfriend. Until she wasn’t any more. Sorry, Boys. Game over.

It took chutzpah to give Bay that well-publicized kiss-off. The same year Jennifer’s Body, directed by Karyn Kusama, grossed $30 million worldwide on a $15 million budget and uniformly dismal reviews, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, directed by Michael Bay, grossed $400 million on a $200 million budget. (But that’s yet another story.)

SPOILER ALERT: Out of respect to writer Diablo Cody’s wondrous storyline, I’m not pretending this movie is only worth seeing once and in total ignorance. In fact, it must be seen at least twice to be fully appreciated. Call it complex storytelling, hidden depth, flaws in the plot structure and/or direction, or all of the above.

Jennifer’s Body is the story of a lush cheerleader ritualistically murdered by the cute lead singer of boy band Low Shoulder, in a pact with the Devil for fame and stardom. Unfortunately for the teenage males of suburban Devil’s Kettle, the cheerleader is thereby transformed into a bite’em’n’eat’em serial killer, selecting, seducing, and isolating male classmates before offing them at their most pathetically tumescent — on the brink, they think, of experiencing the private pleasures of her flesh. Bummer for the guys onscreen and a refreshing, amusing twist for a jaded female audience.

Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and Jennifer (Megan Fox)

Demon-Jennifer is a bodacious avatar of female rage — plus other less righteous emotions, hormones, and vanities. Her story is told by best friend Anita, nicknamed Needy, the gawky sidekick in glasses who’s a bit smitten by Jennifer’s “saltiness.” Needy eventually figures out her friend is “actually evil.” For her boyfriend Chip’s sake, Needy is forced to fight her to the death. As narrator, Needy frames the action, told in flashback, from her prison cell. This formal device complicates the plot but pays off in a clever denouement shown in a montage of stills and video under the closing credits. As I write that sentence, I have to wonder why this vital piece of story — Needy’s revenge massacre of Low Shoulder — is relegated to an afterthought.

So, it’s a (media) story within a (movie) story, a star within a character, and a film within a genre or two. Any way you slice it, Jennifer’s Body is disputed territory — which gives that awkward title the post-modern cachet of multiple readings. Is it slasher? Chick flick? Coming-of-age? Vampire? Feminist? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s even vampire-lesbian, a tease it declines to exploit; teen psycho, cultural satire, and New Romantic.

Amanda Seyfried as Needy

Two things make the film hard to watch, or clearly “see.” First, Megan Fox’s bravura glamour. As Needy, Amanda Seyfried is every inch an actress and holds her own, but Kusama’s camera gives Fox’s fearsome symmetry the kind of attention ultimately detrimental to a storyline. No one’s going to complain, but droolworthy Fox detracts from Needy’s story, and that’s a problem because Needy is our low-profile protagonist, and she bookends the film. For the script to work, we have to root for both halves of this dynamic duo, until we let go of Jennifer and follow Needy, whose rage is less psychosis and more personal-is-political focus.

Second, Diablo Cody’s free-form plotting, with its gratuitous flashbacks and ill-timed exposition, impedes the film’s forward drive. The most glaring example comes three-quarters in, when Jennifer suddenly decides to let Needy and the audience in on the details of her own heinous murder. We don’t know why we’re suddenly watching a missing narrative chunk in flashback, but the footage is compelling and when it’s over, Jennifer suddenly comes on to Needy in their much hyped lesbian moment. Heat trumps logic, just like in high school. Are they going to do it? No. Was it actual lesbian heat? Um. Can hormonally unstable Jennifer’s power plays be assigned a stable orientation other than “on?”

Demon Jennifer

Since Jennifer herself is clueless how she returned from the dead, Needy makes a trip to the Occult section of the campus library to discover “demonic transference happens when you try to sacrifice a virgin to Satan who isn’t an actual virgin.” Great. Now Needy’s best friends with a demon. She tries to warn Chip, who, as her boyfriend, is the obvious next victim on Jennifer’s list of perversions.

Needy: Jennifer’s evil.

Chip: I know.

Needy: No, I mean, she’s actually evil. Not high-school evil.

Such stock-in-trade dialogue wherein the danger to an individual or the community is willfully ignored, is kept to a minimum, yet it’s one of the treats of the monster genre. Remember the original Dracula (1931), with Bela Lugosi? It’s worth a look, in sumptuous black and white. Yes, it’s ham-fisted, stilted, stagey, featuring a bat on a string, but it’s pretty authoritative about Transylvanian vampire lore — sleeping habits (coffin, native soil, diurnal), telltale signs (no reflection in mirrors, fear of sunlight), and remedies (garlic, crosses, stake through heart). Tracking and dissecting vampire quirks is half the fun of having them around.

Vampire trope

The pleasure of recognition, that ghastly chill down the spine, is mostly missing here, because this is less a genre movie than a rite of passage dressed-up in the tropes of horror. Emotion, intuition, everyday telepathy between close friends are on a sliding-scale from everyday reality to full-blown inexplicable mayhem. Rules governing demons are introduced piecemeal, and Jennifer’s sudden new talents — like projectile vomiting black goo — are momentary gross-outs devoid of gravitas. Such tricks work less well a second time. Worse, Jennifer’s ability to rise in the air and hover is abruptly revealed in the climactic fight scene to no strategic advantage. Surprising but not really satisfying, the hovering trick later powers Needy’s prison escape. Is that why it was introduced when it wasn’t necessary?

So, okay, Cody’s script is loose-weave. It’s also fresh, grrrl-centric, fed-up with male ego/privilege, and full of satiric touches. And yeah, Megan Fox overwhelms the cast and crew with her performative beauty, but she’s both a great icon for most-popular-cheerleader-with-perfect-cheekbones and a recognizable teenager: a bipolar wreck under her foundation, an insecure bitch seducing her best friend’s boyfriend, a naive groupie seeking validation from a small-time boy band “from the city.”

The central pleasure of Jennifer’s Body — the confusing love Needy feels for Jennifer, and the trouble she takes to clarify that feeling, and act on it (revenging Chip), then act on it again (revenging pre-demon Jennifer) — might be precisely what turned off male reviewers. For all the promise of eye candy going in, this is a story about young women negotiating the horrors of the adolescent-to-adult obstacle course with some dignity, loyalty, and social conscience intact. The infamous male gaze has to work harder to appropriate a film told from the p.o.v. of cute but bookish, shy but self-respecting Needy, whose closest bond is, and might ever be, her friend Jennifer.

The two girls have four big scenes together:

Date with Destiny: Jennifer uses Needy as a disposable date in her quest for the Low Shoulder lead singer, to the annoyance of Chip, who had a date with his girlfriend. When bad things start to happen at the rustic Melody Lane Tavern, Jennifer ignores Needy’s screams to leave. Oblivious to danger or perhaps unconsciously courting self-destruction, Jennifer gets into the band’s scuzzy retro van. Cue: loss of innocence.

Jennifer and Needy’s much-hyped lesbian moment

Same-Sex practicum: Jennifer hides in Needy’s bed, confesses her own murder, then starts making love to Needy, who lets herself go until she jumps off the bed screeching, “What are you doing?” By scene’s end, Needy knows she has to be the adult.

Prom Night from Hell: in a swampy, abandoned public pool, Jennifer kills Chip and fends off a tongue-lashing from Needy before slithering away without eating his flesh. This climactic scene is less exciting than it should be, crushed under the weight of an overly elaborate set and Jennifer’s ho-hum hovering, but signals the beginning of the end.

Liebestod: Jennifer’s bedroom, when Needy comes in through the window to kill her. In this passionate encounter, the two young women fight like wildcats on the bed and in the air. The fight is physical, metaphysical, and deeply emotional. When Needy rips the BFF locket from around her neck, Jennifer’s eyes register defeat, loss, submission. If she’s not Needy’s best friend forever, what’s the point of immortality? With suddenly slack lids, she gazes into Needy’s eyes in eroticized surrender. How do you spell Romantic death wish? Finally, Needy has topped Jennifer. Maybe that’s all she ever wanted. Then comes the death blow: box cutter to the heart. Wow.

Online movie review clearinghouse Rotten Tomatoes gives Jennifer’s Body a measly 43% rating, which I take as an indication of factors, like misogyny and male entitlement, beyond the reach of wonderful filmmaking. Their summary judgment: Jennifer’s Body features occasionally clever dialogue but the horror/comic premise fails to be either funny or scary enough to satisfy. I guess it all depends on who you’re trying to “satisfy.”

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Erin Blackwell is a practicing astrologer who blogs at venus11house and pinkrush. Congratulations to Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green on their new baby boy.

Movie Preview: Jennifer’s Body

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?

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People cannot stop talking about the new upcoming Diablo Cody/Megan Fox/Karyn Kusama horror film Jennifer’s Body. A wonderful article titled, “Will Chicks Dig Jennifer’s Body?”, cropped up at Cinematical over the weekend, and the author, Jenni Miller, does a thorough job of distilling the recent Bust Magazine discussion (August/September issue) of Jennifer’s Body. She ends with this:

The question is, ladies and gents, do you think Cody and Kusama can pull this off? Is the male-targeted marketing going to turn off any women who might otherwise be tempted to see it? Or, for that matter, what about folks who are tired of the ubiquitous Megan Fox?

I highly recommend checking out this entire article, as it includes quotes from Diablo Cody (a self-professed feminist) who talks about why Jennifer’s Body is, in fact, feminist, referencing the film’s girl-on-girl crime and how the film deals with the issue of eating disorders.

Miller’s article also brings up Carol J. Clover’s “Final Girl” theory, which we discussed in our preview for Sorority Row:

She argues in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, that slasher films are obsessed with feminism in that they force male viewers to identify with the Final Girl, the one lone girl who doesn’t die, who gets her shit together, who kills the killer.

I’d like to see this movie really satirize the new gratuitous torture-porn reawakening of the horror/slasher genre. I’d like to see this movie really poke fun at the Sexy Megan Fox Hollywood Male Fantasy Goddess trope. I mean, it involves man-eating. Literally. But the unironic male-targeted marketing (Hey boys, check out the Sexy Megan Fox Hollywood Male Fantasy Goddess!) does seem, you know, problematic in terms of entirely pulling off a feminist satire of slasher films.

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Be sure to check out Shakesville’s discussion of Jennifer’s Body, where Liss references the New York Times Article, “Taking Back the Knife: Girls Gone Gory,” which also mentions Carol J. Clover’s “Final Girl” theory. And, watch the trailer at the Bust Magazine blog. A great discussion takes place in the comments section: I Know What Boys Like, I Know What Guys Want.