Not Your Scream Queen #1: Jennifer's Body

Fantasy+Girls Podcast

• Right from the get-go, Em and EJ agree there’s an important topic that, coming out of the My Favorite Apocalypse series, we have not touched on enough: Cannibalism. It only comes up a few times every episode, we promise to do better.
• Which brings us to JENNIFER’S BODY, our first pick for the miniseries.
• But put a pin in that, Em has some ideas: Since we’ve decided to focus this new miniseries on women of horror--writers, directors, actors, and more--she suggests calling it Not Your Scream Queen. That or Spooky Girls.
• EJ is ready to roll but has no clue what movies these are--because they’re not. They’re title ideas for the series. Hello.
• Not Your Scream Queen hits instant icon status.
• The full series will feature a close-up assessment of five different horror films. They don’t necessarily have feminist themes, but they’re all told by women to varying degrees. Which is perhaps somewhat feminist in itself?
• Horror tropes have become so misogynistic within pop culture (not by genre!) that anything that deviates from that misogyny feels like it is inherently making a statement.
• Em notes that growing up, if there was a girl in a horror film, by the end she was sure to be covered in blood and half naked. And those films aren’t always trash, but when that’s all that ever happens, come on.
• EJ adds that if you’re not even playing with your tropes, and merely rehashing, where’s even the fun in that?
• In this series, Em and EJ are here to examine this issue and have some good spooky fun.
• The films chosen for this series are female-written, directed, led, produced, or touch on “female” themes (or at least themes broadly considered female). We aimed for two of three of these for all films included.
• And, most of them, we’re going in blind--including our first pick for today’s episode, Jennifer’s Body, starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.
• Em remembers in the early 2000s when Megan Fox spoke out about her mistreatment during filming and auditioning for TRANSFORMERS by Michael Bay, and how she got blown off for it. She had to wash his car in a bikini for the audition. So cringey.
• Now with #MeToo and the evolution of the conversation of women’s equal treatment, this would never be acceptable, but then, no one wanted to hear it.
• We all owe Megan Fox an apology.
• And, we like to believe, we’ve come a long way since this film released in 2007--not so very long ago!
• So let’s start with a synopsis: we snagged ours from Wikipedia.
• First of all, this film had an incredible cast! Not just Fox and Seyfried, but also with appearances from a pre-fame Chris Pratt, JK Simmons (and out of typecasting to boot), Amy Sedaris, everywhere you turn there was a big name. Even most of the guys who play Jennifer’s victims were very familiar looking.
• Not to mention, writers and director Diablo Cody--indie queen of JUNO, YOUNG ADULT, TULLY … a brilliant lady.
• And of course, the film has earned a cult following since its original flop release.
• For Em, there were a few reactions, and one was a hard cringe at the accuracy of this film’s reflection of being a teen in the 2000s -- the hair, the styles, the slang…. save us from our former selves.
• The other big takeaway: In what universe is Amanda Seyfriend the “plain” best friend?
• They at least tried with the classic 90s trick of giving the gorgeous actor glasses to make them a nerd.
• Em observes the film starts with Seyfriend’s character, Needy, in jail after the events of the movie--she’s a kicker. Okay. But that line never circled back to any bigger meaning.
• Was it because she’d always been the sidekick? She offed the person she was sidekick too?
• And let’s not forget The Kiss. A kiss between Jennifer and Needy was prominently featured in the film’s trailers, and it was a clear effort to pander to the teen guy horror cliche crowd.
• But in the context of the film, and per Cody’s commentary, Needy was written to be a little in love with Jennifer from the start. Maybe romantically, but also could be taken to be that complicated way teen girls relate to each other--there’s always that one girl everyone seems to adore, or perhaps want to trade places with.
• There was an obsession between Needy and Jennifer, and a codependency that was very complicated and twisted.
• It says a lot about female friendship, about high school dynamics, about developing our own identities.
• Em suggests the film is a portrait of a toxic friendship.
• Even though Needy was second fiddle, but still Jennifer won’t do anything without Needy. There clear rules to their dynamic, including what to wear and how to look, to ensure those dynamics stay in place.
• EJ calls out that we’ve all been there. We’ve all internalized these kinds of unspoken rules to social dynamics, especially in high school.
• The film is set in the small town Devil’s Kettle, where there is a waterfall with a whirlpool that sucks things in, and no one knows where the things that fall into it end up.
• At the start of the film, Jennifer drags Needy along to a bar to see a band playing there. Early 2000s setting, so it’s emo rock, naturally.
• Jennifer’s flirting with the band, and Needy hears the band talking about Jennifer while she’s getting a drink, calling her a virgin tease who won’t put out. Needy tries to defend her friend by telling them she is a virgin and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
• EJ says as soon as the band leader opened his mouth, all she could hear was “Rape, rape, rape,” from his first words.
• There’s a fire in the bar, and in the chaos after, Jennifer gets in the band’s van with them and drives away, despite Needy’s warnings and begging.
• And for most of the movie, viewers don’t know what happened to Jennifer that night. But she returns as essentially a succubus, possessed by a demon.
• Spoiler alert: The band tries to sacrifice a virgin to satan because that’s the only way to get ahead in the music business. And Jennifer was not, in fact, a virgin, so everything went awry. Apparently in which case, you are embodied by a demon.
• Em really wishes the film had gone a different way. Really, a demon? Versus being killed? If she had then turned that demonic force against the band itself in a true revenge, Em would have been all about it. But instead, she ends up preying on relatively innocent teen boys who had nothing to do with it through the rest of the film.
• EJ wrestled with it too, but landed on the idea that trauma passes forward. The film goes out of its way to make it clear the guys Jennifer murders in her warpath are not, themselves, evil, as the band members were.
• If you looked at the story without the horror elements, it boils down to a woman who suffers a major trauma, and then takes it out on all men, and her friend’s efforts to stop it, tears them apart.
• It’s notable that despite everything that happens over the film, Needy is still driven to vindicate her friend in the end, and finally turns the revenge on the band in the end.
• But let’s talk about Jennifer as a character.
• EJ loves a character who sucks as a human, so she was here for Jennifer and her shitty ways. And she likes that both the hero (Needy) and the villain, or at least the literal monster of the horror arc (Jennifer) were both women -- rare for a horror film!
• She also appreciated that Jennifer and her return by demon possession upended the trope ...