Jennifer’s Body – Bitch Flicks

‘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.

Violent Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Violent Women Theme Week here.

The Violent Vagina: The Real Horror Behind the Teeth by Belle Artiquez

It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

Salt: A Refreshing Genderless Lens by Cameron Airen

Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it.

Shieldmaidens: The Power and Pleasure of Women’s Violence on Vikings by Lisa Bolekaja

In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, Neal King and Martha McCaughey assert that “cultural standards still equate womanhood with kindness and nonviolence, manhood with strength and aggression.” Under the Victorian cult of true womanhood, womanly virtue was supposed to encompass piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Thank goodness writer/producer Michael Hirst ignored those virtues by creating two dynamic women warriors with his historical drama Vikings.

Emotional Violence, Kink, and The Duke of Burgundy by Rushaa Louise Hamid

In much of feminist literature from the past, kink is seen an act driven by patriarchy, with submissive women reproducing their oppressions in the bedroom and capitulating to gendered norms of women as silent and subservient. Even nowadays as the tide gradually changes, there is still a large amount of ire reserved for those who practice BDSM.

Violence and Morality in The 100 by Esther Nassaris

This act of mercy killing is the first of many moments when Clarke is forced to be violent for the good of others. It not only prompts an important change within herself – she loses her idealistic ways – but it prompts a change in the group dynamics. After this moment, Clarke begins to pull away from the co-leadership she and Bellamy had operated in and moves toward becoming the sole leader of the delinquents.

The Rising “Tough” Women in AMC’s The Walking Dead Season Five by Brooke Bennett

This season seems to present a large change in representational issues by including complex characters of color that we actually know something about and care for, presenting the couple of Aaron and Eric from the Alexandria community and self-pronounced lesbian Tara, and doing away with the innate equation of vagina equals do the laundry while the men go kill all the zombies.

Nine Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies by Sara Century

Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules.

The Real Mother Russia: Modernising Murder and Betrayal in The Americans by Dan Jordan

The ideological battle between the FBI and KGB is thus a gendered one, as the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other on a more even world stage.

Monster: A Telling of the Real Life Consequences for Violent Women by Danika Kimball

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. Monster vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Stoker–Family Secrets, Frozen Bodies, and Female Orgasms by Julie Mills

Her uncle’s imposing presence has awakened in her at the same time a lust for bloodshed and an intense sexual desire, and she promptly begins to experiment and seek out means with which to satisfy both.

Sons of Anarchy: Female Violence, Feminist Care by Leigh Kolb

At the end of season 6, Gemma violently clashes the spheres of power. She’s in the kitchen. She’s using an iron, and a carving fork. Using tools of the feminine sphere, she brutally murders Tara, because she fears that Tara is about to take control and dismantle the club—the life, the style of mothering and living—that she brought home with her so many years ago.

What’s in a Name: Anxiety About Violent Women in Monster, Teeth, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Colleen Clemens

The first college course I ever developed focuses on women and violence. Stemming from my interest in women who enact violence on and off the page, I wanted to ask students to think about our perceptions of women as “naturally” peaceful.

Hard Candy: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection by Emma Kat Richardson

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

High Tension: Rethinking Female Sexuality and Subjectivity Through Violence by Laura Minor

Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

“It is not fitting for her to be so manly and terrifying”: Catharsis and Female Chaos in Pasolini’s Medea by Brigit McCone

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea was created in the aftermath of Italian fascism, another masculine cult of personal self-sacrifice in the interests of the state. Utilizing the operatic charisma of the legendary Maria Callas in a non-singing role, he harnesses the pitiless woman as an agent of chaos, rebelling against the dictates of the masculine state that urges her husband to discard her, in favor of a politically advantageous match.

Domestic Terrorism: Feminized Violence in Misery by Tessa Racked

Annie is a human being, dangerous not because of an evil supernatural force, but rather a severe and untreated mental illness. Although Annie is not given an official diagnosis in the film or the novel, an interview with a forensic psychologist on the special edition DVD characterizes her as displaying symptoms of several different conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Girlhood: Observed But Not Seen by Ren Jender

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

Patty Jenkins’ Monster: Shouldering the Double Burden of Masculinity and Femininity by Katherine Parker-Hay

In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women by Melissa-Kelly Franklin

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

Slashing Gender Assumptions: The Female Killer, Unmasked by Kate Blair

To a certain extent, the reveal of woman as killer in both films comes across as a “gotcha” moment. After an hour or so of being scared out of your wits, it’s both surprising and puzzling to see a woman emerge as the killer. In the real world, most documented violent crimes are committed by men, but in a film, where anything can happen, there’s no reason to make this assumption.

“Did I Step on Your Moment?” The Seductive and Psychological Violence of Female Superheroes by Mary Iannone

This style of fighting codes our female superheroes as half menacing and half attractive – we are meant to be afraid of them, but also enticed by them. Their violence is inextricably linked to their sexuality.

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film by Laura Power

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

“She Called Them Anti-Seed”: How the Women of Mad Max: Fury Road Divorce Violence from Strength by Cate Young

In Mad Max: Fury Road the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

Sugar, Spice, and Things Not Nice: Violent Girlhood in Violet & Daisy by Caroline Madden

The character of Daisy personifies the film’s juxtaposition of violence and girlhood. Daisy loves cute animals and doesn’t understand Violet’s dirty jokes. The twist is even that she has not really killed anyone, thus remaining innocent of all crimes. The opening scene displays the most daring oppositional iconography — the young girls dress as nuns, the ultimate image of pure goodness, while having a shoot ‘em up with a gang.

Children: The Great Qualifier of Female Violence by Katherine Fusciardi

True, the rape revenge trope has been put at bay, but there is still a gender issue behind the remaining motivation. It focuses around the assumption of maternity being the all-encompassing passion. Until female characters can be violent for reasons that have nothing to do with their womanhood, there still isn’t complete equality in media.

How Spring Breakers Ungenders the Erotic and Transformative Power of Violence by Emma Houxbois

The girls, driven by desperation to escape their mundane lives to take part in Spring Break, scheme a robbery of the local chicken shack to raise the necessary funds to get there. To psyche themselves up for the crime, they exhort each other to pretend it’s a video game, to detach themselves and dehumanize their victims in a hurried pep talk to the same end as the grueling boot camp scenes sequences in Full Metal Jacket.

Mad Max: Fury Road: Violence Helps Our Heroines Have a Lovely Day by Sophie Hall

Furiosa, stabbed and wounded yet still persistent, takes down the main villain Immortan Joe. “Remember me?” Furiosa growls just before ripping his breathing apparatus–and half of his face–clean off. That quip may seem like your average cool one-liner, but for me it is so much more than that. It’s Furiosa, our female protagonist, who takes out the bad guy. Not Max. Not Nux, or any other male character. Her.

Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: Ginger Snaps by Kelly Piercy

Ginger, despite morphing into a werewolf, becomes our protagonist killer in a very human way, and the complexity of her journey is a cinematic rarity. A large part of its appeal is the addictive excitement-and-relief cocktail that comes with seeing your experiences reflected on screen–to see menstruation from a menstruating perspective. Who wouldn’t see want to see the violence of their PMS daydreams being played out?

When Violence Is Excusable: Regina Mills and the Twisted Morality of Once Upon a Time by Emma Thomas

In the past, Regina’s path to control is lined with dark magic. Dark magic is fueled by her anger, and the two intersect endlessly until it is hard to tell whether Regina is controlling the anger, or the anger is controlling her. What is definitive is that the more her power grows the more violent she becomes. With the only person who offered her a loving future dead, there is no one to rein her in.

Timorous Killers: The Breach of Shyness in Polanski’s Repulsion by Johanna Mackin

The eye we see in the film’s opening credits belongs to Carol and encapsulates her relationship to the internal and external worlds. To outside observers, Carol’s large, doe-like eyes are a signifier of her feminine allure, but, as is made palpable to the viewer, they also house her intense fear and constitute a deceptive barrier against the malignant traumas that disturb her internal world.

Death of the (Male) Author: Feminist Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar by Sarah Smyth

How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy, and authority.

TV and Classic Literature: Is The 100 like Lord of the Flies? by Rowan Ellis

On the contrary, Octavia moves away from the explicit sexuality of her role in the pilot, and although her initial training is linked to Lincoln, she gravitates toward a warrior’s life to gain the respect of Indra. Although some critics have seen this as a drastic change in her characterisation, looking back at her first scene in the pilot, where she is held back by Bellamy while trying to attack the others for repeating rumours about her, it feels more like a development.

The Killer in/and the Girl: Alexandre Aja’s High Tension by Rebecca Willoughby

In High Tension, we have le tueur—the Killer—in place of the Monster, who in Shelley’s novel can be read as Victor Frankenstein’s doppelganger, that most famous of psychological devices used to illustrate the violence with which the repressed returns, doing all of the things the typical, well-socialized individual could never dream of doing. But where Victor utilizes the Monster to reject society’s expectations of him (including a traditional, heterosexual union with his adopted sister, Elizabeth), High Tension’s Marie creates le tueur because her desires do not fit within the normative world of the film.

From Ginger Snaps to Jennifer’s Body: The Contamination of Violent Women by Julia Patt

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.

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

Demon/Spirit Possession: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Demon/Spirit Possession Theme Week here.

The Conjuring: When Motherhood Meets Demonic Possession by Caroline Madden

Punishment is the main objective of the demon Bathsheba in The Conjuring, and specifically she seeks to punish the mother figure of a family. The hauntings and road to possession begin when in 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron move into an old farmhouse in Rhode Island with their five daughters. Slowly, they begin to experience paranormal disturbances.

Because Being Female is Frightening Enough: #YesAllWomen and The Exorcism of Emily Rose by Rebecca Willoughby

In the film a young girl, Emily Rose, perishes following a protracted period of “attack” by demons while under the protective care of Father Moore, a Catholic priest. Female attorney Erin Bruner is chosen to defend Moore against charges of negligent homicide in Emily’s death. Through the two’s connection to the girl throughout the film, each undergoes what I’ve called here a “conversion experience,” as they learn more about the possibility that demons really do exist—demons that can be read to correspond to the challenges that women face in culture every day. Even before the advent of #YesAllWomen, a film like The Exorcism of Emily Rose shows us how to overcome skepticism and create a connected community of individuals committed to sharing troublesome experiences in the service of awareness and activism.

Demons: Finding New Language for an Old Cult Classic by Lisa Bolekaja

I am a horror fan and most times I root for the monster. There, I said it. I root for what should be the feared. The dreaded Other. With all the loaded symbolism that the horror genre represents (fear of sex, fear of the unknown, fear of death and decay, xenophobia etc), I find it cathartic and often liberating to root for the disruption of life as we know it. I love watching humans deal with chaotic change.

Twin Peaks Mysticism Won’t Save You From the Patriarchy by Rhianna Shaheen

I do believe that Lynch and Frost meant to use BOB as “the evil that men do” and as a means to understand family violence and abuse, but they jump around the issue so much that it only reflects uncertainty. The show’s inability to hold evil men responsible for their actions is too reminiscent of our own society. As soon as we answer “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” the show does its best to rebury the ugly truth that we so struggled to uncover. After that it fully commits to understanding the mythos behind it. This is troubling to me.

The Strangeness of (Surrogate) Motherhood in The Innocents by Ren Jender

Part of what makes the excellent 1961 film The Innocents different is the main character, the governess, Miss Giddens (played by Deborah Kerr), is thrust into a parental role suddenly. We see her at the beginning in an interview with the children’s uncle, a handsome playboy (played by Michael Redgrave, Vanessa’s father) who tells her he spends much of his time traveling and the rest in his home in London. When he offers her the job at his country estate, he takes her hand (a bold move for the Victorian era, when the film takes place) and asks if she is ready to take full responsibility for the children, because he doesn’t want to be disturbed during his adventures in London and abroad.

Direct from Hell: Paranormal Activity and the Demonic Gaze by Alexandra West

Micah’s patriarchal control through the first half of the film is omnipresent as he mocks, coerces and films his girlfriend’s descent into possession. The second half of the film deals with the demon taking control of the film. Micah and Katie are too weak to properly deal with the situation and they lose sight of their safety. The audience see what the demon wants them to see; it is in control of not only Katie’s mind and body, but also what the audience is exposed to, creating an unstable and terrifying experience.

She’s Possessed, Baby, Possessed! by Scarlett Harris

When Phoebe is taken over by the deadly sin lust in “Sin Francisco,” she sexually assaults her professor and has sex with a policeman on the job, while Piper dances on her bar during her high school reunion when she’s possessed by an evil spirit. And almost all the evil women in the show are sexualized: the succubus, shapeshifter Kaia, the Stillman sisters in “The Power of Three Blondes,” the seer Kyra, etc.

Does Jennifer’s Body Turn The Possession Genre On Its Head? by Gaayathri Nair

The Shining: Demon Selection by Wolf

Jack is both a victim and perpetrator of domestic violence. Jack’s father was an abusive alcoholic who beat and berated him. When Jack drank he used to parrot his father’s words (“take your medicine” “you damn pup”). He is primarily verbally abusive. The last incident of drinking that pushed him to sober up was accidentally breaking Danny’s arm. Wendy, perhaps like Jack’s mother, lied for him but swore she would leave if he didn’t sober up.

The Notion of “Forever and Ever and Ever” in The Amityville Horror and The Shining by Rachel Wortherley

The nightmare that Jack and George share signifies their innate fear—the possibility of destroying the family they, as men, have built.

Rosemary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body? by Sarah Smyth

To what extent does a woman, pregnant or otherwise, “own” her body? To what extent can or should a woman’s (pregnant) body be subject to social concerns? Physically and socially, where is the divide between the mother’s body and the baby’s body? By raising these questions, Rosemary’s Baby is not only concerned with the spiritual but, also, the social possession of the female body.

Jennifer’s Body: The Sexuality of Female Possession and How the Devil Didn’t Need to Make Her Do It by Shay Revolver

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.

The Invocation of Inner Demons in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession by Giselle Defares

Mark’s doppelgänger reflects Anna’s fascination with Heinrich’s persona: narcissism, religion, imagination, and his sexual freedom. Anna’s doppelgänger, Helen, is a pure, calm, and collected woman. That’s precisely what Mark wants–the opposite of Anna.

‘Jennifer’s Body’: The Sexuality of Female Possession and How the Devil Didn’t Need to Make Her Do It

Needy, being a good friend to a bad girl.

This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.

Female possession has been used as a plot device to show what could happen to a woman who strayed from the norm. It was engrained into our subconscious that if you weren’t a good little girl and didn’t toe the line you could, and probably would, be possessed. It would be horrible, you will become deformed, unattractive and suffer like never before. Whether you were a believer or not, you knew that being possessed was never a good thing.

You also learned very early on that if a girl was possessed and acted badly, it really wasn’t her fault and all the boys would run to save her because it was a horrible fate and all the bad things she did while possessed weren’t really her fault because, the devil or (insert demon here) made her do it. The messages in these films, that I both loved and loathed, were clear: if you had a vagina you weren’t to blame for your bad behavior and the devil is gonna get you if you don’t act like the perfect little girl that fits nicely into the mold that our society has set forth.

The devil didn't make me do it — The devil didn’t make me do it

This myth and the tropes within were the status quo for many, many years until Jennifer’s Body came along in 2009 and did something that even I didn’t see coming. It showed a different side of female possession. Sure, Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) gets possessed, and true, she does some horrible things while under the influence of her demon and, yeah, she only got possessed because she did something that good little girls and nice young ladies don’t do, but what’s great about the whole situation is that in the midst of all of the horrible that follows the possession you don’t feel sorry for her. At least, not in the traditional way; you’re actually amused at all the carnage that follows because she looks like she’s having fun and she turns the tables on every horror movie trope you knew you hated or thought was laced with misogyny and seasoned with a heaping spoonful of the requisite female apologetics. Jennifer is bad, but she wasn’t made that way by the possession; had this been a regular old teen movie she would have played the anti-hero that you loved to hate and once possession takes hold she’s like Regina George in demonoid form.

One of the best things about Jennifer’s Body is how inappropriate it is and unapologetic it is for its inappropriateness. Jennifer’s Body is filled with pure naughty, campy fun. But it’s also filled with something even more interesting. It holds a mirror up to society and the dynamics of not only female friendships but also female sexuality. Not only is it the story of a girl “gone wild” in different kind of way, we get treated to two female possessions that have two totally different results. The first one is the possession of the film’s namesake, the flirtatious, wild child Jennifer Check and the second is that of her friend the quiet, good girl next door, Anita “Needy” Lesnicki. Jennifer pushes through and has fun with it and Anita tends to be fearful of the change and eventually comes to grips with her new interior angel and begins to embrace it and relish in her newfound freedom, even if that freedom starts off with her behind bars at a mental hospital.

The film gives us two different views of the same story. When it comes to Jennifer, on one hand she does seem to get “punished” in what feels like the generic, horror film, female possession fashion for ditching her friend and going alone into a van with a group of boys (GASP), but unlike every other female possession film this demon makes her not only stronger but more fearless and she knows how to use her powers. She turns the tables on every guy who crosses her path and takes to her new self like a champ. She doesn’t cry out for help or to be saved, she plays along and enjoys the freedom that the possession gives her and actual enjoys herself a bit. The demon doesn’t take control of Jennifer’s body, or force her to do something that you can sense she really doesn’t want to do. It engages the parts of her that were already there. No one flinches at Jennifer’s post-possession overt sexuality because that was a quality that she possessed before. In fact, her previous overt sexuality is what the demon uses to seduce her prey and from the first ingestion of the school’s football captain to the last man the demon leaves standing she wields her sexuality like an artist. She didn’t get taken over and changed into something opposite of what she was before, i.e. the usual nice girl who should be saved because she was so sweet before; instead it just turns her up to 11.

The other possession in Jennifer’s Body happens to the title character’s best friend, Anita , who gets possessed as an accidental side effect of trying to save Jennifer. Anita knows who her friend is and finds herself attached to her, hence the nickname “Needy,” in a super codependent way. After all of the killings that the possessed Jennifer commits, she shows up at Anita’s house, drenched in blood after her last male kill and tries to seduce Anita as a preamble to the demon, or is it Jennifer 2.0, telling the tale of how she came to be possessed. This confession leaves Anita a little more than freaked and she sets out to help her friend. She does everything that the good girl is supposed to do, including going to the library and researching what has become of her friend Jennifer. The film ends with Anita being forced to stab her best friend in the heart to kill her because she is a succubus and she killed her boyfriend along with a slew of other horny teenage boys. Of course, the good girl, Anita, who has actually saved the day, gets caught by her bestie’s mother wielding the knife over her now dead, or re-dead, daughter, and she’s shipped off to an asylum. It is from that asylum that Anita retells the story and it is also where she will escape from and set out to find the band that turned her friend into a murderous succubus and she kills them all.

Anita’s possession comes from a place of the girl who did everything good and right. She was a good friend, loyal girlfriend, smart, nice, modest. Pretty much everything that girls are supposed to be in these movies. When she gets possessed and retains Jennifer’s powers via a non-fatal bite during the catfight, literally, from hell she goes on to seem happy about it. She’s finally free. She is no longer “needy” or insecure. She finds strength in the knowledge that she can do anything. But, the question lingers does Jennifer want to be saved? Does Anita? Killing and cannibalism aside, what’s so wrong with a girl enjoying herself? Why does it need to be punished?

In movies where female possession is used as the main form of horror, it has always been hard for me to decipher if the reason that so many people attempt to save the “damsel in distress” is because she’s so altered that she needs it, or if it’s because she has become powerful, unstoppable, cognizant, aware, and free. Is it so much better to put the genie of strength back in the box? Is it so necessary for women to conform to society’s norms and expectations that any deviation from these norms causes society to feel fear? Is the dread coming from the empathy we have for the poor girl being possessed, from the feeling that it could happen to us, or from the knowledge that being powerless is a feeling that most women have? It’s should scare us that in movies like this we are only allowed power through artificial, usually male allowed or induced means, and when we become too powerful, the power gets taken away because we can’t handle it or shouldn’t have it. There is often an undertone in these films that the real problem isn’t the demon, it’s the vessel.

The thing that makes Jennifer’s Body so great is that even though Jennifer dies, Anita, the girl who probably needs the strength that possession carries, gets to live and keep her power. There is something empowering about watching her joyfully skip away from the asylum and hunt down the band responsible for her current condition and Jennifer’s possession. She knows that she has the strength that she needs to survive and carry on but also that she’s no longer afraid. The fear of speaking her mind or exploring and existing outside the lines is gone. The possession allows her to speak and live freely, to live outside the lines and define her own goals, needs, and desire. The empowerment comes not from watching her go medieval on the men behind the curtain, but from the innocence on her face as she confronts them. There is something beautiful about taking a genre that has long punished women and turning it on its head. There was no man to save Jennifer here, only another woman, a friend, and she stands tall in victory when the dust settles. 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.

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac, recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a New York-based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator, and writer. She’s obsessed with most books, especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies and TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in mainstream cinema and television productions. Twitter: @socialslumber13.

Does ‘Jennifer’s Body’ Turn The Possession Genre On Its Head?

‘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.”

This post by staff writer Gaayathri Nair appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.

When Jennifer’s Body first came out in 2009, both writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kausama attempted to frame the movie as a feminist subversion of the horror genre. In interviews they both talked about horror being a genre that actually has a lot to offer women in terms of empowerment, in particular referring to the “final girl trope.” Despite their intentions, I’m not sure if Jennifer’s Body can be read as a movie that defies the sexist tropes of both the teen and horror genres. As a possession movie, it is certainly a departure from many of the tropes of the genre and I think the movie does have moments of brilliance. However it falls down for me because it relies on teen and horror movie staples of competitive female friendship, a young women that is constantly objectified on screen and then finally punished for her sexuality.

In Jennifer’s Body, Jennifer, played by Megan Fox is offered as a virgin sacrifice by a less than mediocre indie band to the devil in order to launch themselves into the big time. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, Jennifer is not actually a virgin and so a “demonic transference” occurs where she comes to life but happens to be possessed by a succubus.

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 position as a person who is sexual and enjoys sex is very clear. It is also clear early on that she knows the effect her looks have on the people around her. She knows that her best friend is captivated by her and uses that to her advantage to keep her in line. She loves the small measure of power her sexuality gives her over the boys she knows desperately want to screw her but can’t. Jennifer chooses exactly who she wants to have sex with; she favors more mature guys who are out of high school.

Unfortunately, it is this preference for more worldly guys that gets her into trouble. Her interest in the lead singer of the band that has come to play at the bar of her small town literally gets Jennifer killed. This is par for the course in horror movies; women who actively engage in expressing their own sexuality are normally punished and often lethally. However in this case, 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.

In more traditional possession films, the female victim is fearful of her possession. She generally tries to fight against it and is often pathologized as mentally ill, for example in The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Ros e, Jennifer revels in her new found possession. She loves the power and strength it gives her. She compares it to feeling like a goddess and that feeling is worth the lives of a few paltry high school boys in order to sustain it. She feels no guilt or conflict about her appetites at all.

Unfortunately for Jennifer, her best friend Needy discovers how she is sustaining herself and is unimpressed, especially since Jennifer targeted a particular boy who she was friends with and then also tries to eat her boyfriend. So here, just when it all starts to get interesting we fall into the regular yawn-fest that is a female friendship that is not really a friendship at all and is instead characterized by petty fights over boys and jealousy. Sure this is on an extreme level, but that is what it really boils down to.

To me the movie would have been so much better if it hadn’t come down to Jennifer’s jealousy of Needy spending time with her boyfriend. It would have been so much more satisfying if the final showdown was not between Jennifer and Needy, but between the two of them and the members of Low Shoulder who sacrificed Jennifer for their own ends in the first place. Needy leaves the end of the movie with some of Jennifer’s powers minus the need to consume human flesh and takes her revenge on the people that hurt her friend. She deals with Low Shoulder eventually, but their demise feels like a sad afterthought when it is they who are in fact the arch villains, not Jennifer. For me, while Jennifer’s Body was interesting in the way it dealt with the tropes of the possession movie genre, it wasn’t revolutionary enough. It had so much potential and could have gone so much further; instead, it feels like a cop-out.

Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri

Call For Writers: Demon/Spirit Possession

Our theme week for October 2014 will be Demon/Spirit Possession.

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. An example of this is the separation between Angel and Angelus in both the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. In this case, vampirism is used as a metaphor for addiction; it is something that happens to Angel, taking away his subjectivity and rendering him choiceless. Another prime example is Bob from Twin Peaks, an evil spirit who possesses victims, compelling them to perform depraved acts of violence, sexual deviance, and destruction.

Does separating evil from the person who performs the act actually explain the “evil” itself, or does it simply make excuses for bad and, sometimes, inexplicably cruel behavior?

Another permutation of possession creates a binary between innocence and evil, which we see in films focusing on child possession (The Exorcist, The Children, and Village of the Damned). These types of films articulate discomfort surrounding the loss of innocence as well as a generalized fear of children, representing them as unknowable and even alien. The question sometimes arises, “Are they even possessed, or are children by nature this wicked and amoral?”

In possession themed media, we also see a binary between innocence and sexuality. This example occurs particularly when young women are the victims of possession. Such films allow forbidden sexual desires to be acted out on film giving the audience voyeuristic indulgence like in the case of Jennifer’s Body or Witchboard while iterating a cultural fear of female sexuality in young women. In these cases, female sexuality is seen as dangerous and uncontrollable, powerful, and without boundaries.

In any of these types of possession film, punishment is very often an underlying theme. The possessed person punishes those around them and is simultaneously punished as a consequence of the spirit or demon’s disregard for its host’s health, relationships, or life. It’s worthwhile to consider why these narratives single out certain people or groups for punishment.

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, October 24 by midnight.

The Exorcist

Witchboard

The Evil Dead

Evil Dead II

Army of Darkness

Game of Thrones

The Children

Child’s Play

Christine

The Prophecy

Ghost

The Lovely Bones

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

All of Me

Jennifer’s Body

The Possession

American Horror Story

Fallen

Satan’s Baby Doll

Supernatural

House

Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare

Constantine

The Shining

Twin Peaks

The Amityville Horror

Paranormal Activity

This is The End

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Angel

Ghostbusters II

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.