Hell is a Teenage Girl
From the Archives: A review of Karyn Kusama & Diablo Cody’s 'Jennifer’s Body'
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰½
Romance ✰✰
Sex ✰✰✰½
Storytelling ✰✰✰✰
Performance ✰✰✰½
Yearning ✰✰✰✰✰
This is the first review in a new segment of The Yearning that we’re calling ‘From the Archives.’ We’re eager to rewatch and reconsider queer media from the past — the seminal, the silly, and the sticky.
This week, we’re discussing Jennifer’s Body. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.
Written by Ali Romig
Let’s set the scene, shall we? You’re in high school and you’re spending a night out with your best friend. She’s beautiful in a way you’ve been taught to envy, but really, you can only bring yourself to adore. You wear a goofy grin whenever she’s near, and stick up for her as if your loyalty alone could protect her from the stinging cruelty of the world. At the party, you two drift apart from each other—something that feels both inevitable and totally heartbreaking. You go home alone, feeling like you’ve somehow lost the night. But to your surprise, she’s there when you arrive—acting strange. A little too uninhibited, too brazen. She pushes you up against a wall, caressing your back, your chest, your stomach, considering you, as if for the first time. Then she puts her lips against your neck, breathes in, and whispers, “are you scared?” She almost takes it further, but at the last second pulls away and leaves without another word. You’re left alone in your confusion, wondering what the hell just happened.
Does the above sound like an entry from your teenage diary, or is that just me? It’s actually a scene from the 2009 cult classic, Jennifer’s Body (minus some of the more gruesome details present in the film). Written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) and directed by Karyn Kusama (The Invitation), Jennifer’s Body follows Needy Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried, with a character name I could dedicate an entire newsletter to) and best friend Jennifer Check (Megan Fox). When Low Shoulder, an indie-rock band “from the city” come to perform in Devil’s Kettle, their small Minnesota town, the two girls trek out to the show, clad in knee socks and puffer jackets. It’s clear from the jump that Jennifer dreams of being anywhere but Devil’s Kettle, and Needy dreams of being anywhere Jennifer is. But when, mid-set, the bar where Low Shoulder is performing spontaneously combusts, Jennifer is whisked away into the band’s van and they drive off with her—leaving Needy behind.
The next day Jennifer shows up to school unscathed and unfazed, much to Needy’s bewilderment. It’s not long before the audience is clued into the fact that something terrible has happened to Jennifer, something that’s left her callous and cannibalizing her male peers. We eventually learn, along with Needy, that Low Shoulder (fronted by Adam Brody, in a stroke of casting genius—does anyone else remember what an indie rock nerd he was on The O.C.?) mistook Jennifer for a virgin and sacrificed her to Satan for radio airtime (“Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie rock band these days?”). Apparently, sacrificing a nonvirgin still gets you what you want, only they’ll end up with a demon stuck inside them. As Jennifer would say, “that’s so emo.”
Though you may not think it from the male gaze-y press posters and choice soundbites, Jennifer’s Body is sharp and often ludicrously and keenly funny.1 It’s distinct in a number of ways—distinctly aughts, distinctly camp, and distinctly bisexual (not “lesbigay,” despite that term being regurgitated in the film as often as an inexplicably spikey black goo). Needy loves her boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons, sporting a very flippy haircut–a triumph of the period). While their’s may not be an overly passionate romance, it is genuine, and to deny that would be dishonest. Similarly, to brush off the undeniable pull between Needy and Jennifer as trivial or pseudo does just as much of a disservice to the story.
The film’s acute bisexuality may be why it’s been repeatedly accused of queerbaiting. It’s an unfortunate and unfair reality that audiences are more often skeptical of bisexual stories in this context. We live in a world where disingenuous or poor media representation has bred a tendency to think anything that admits complication, hesitancy, or fluidity isn’t “gay enough.” And I say this as someone who’s fully willing to concede to the fact that the first time I watched Jennifer’s Body a few years ago, I fell into the camp of those who cried queerbaiting. I’ve come to understand this as a knee-jerk reaction to a media landscape that loves dismissing sapphic narratives as unserious, if not erasing them altogether. Rewatching Jennifer’s Body in years since, each time picking up on things I somehow missed that first go-round, I’ve realized that queerness isn’t just tossed into the movie to tantalize, it’s not even simply one component of the film—it’s the main through-line.
Needy up against the wall. Jennifer’s body pressed against hers. Jennifer’s lips on her neck, moving ever so slightly, asking, “are you scared?” I keep coming back to this scene, over and over again. It takes place after Jennifer’s been changed, but before Needy’s discovered what’s happening. And despite, or maybe because of, the blood and gore present just seconds prior, this moment is noticeably softer, quieter, oddly restrained and full of anticipation. This is the scene that convinced me queerness is the lifeblood of the film, the true force with which Needy must reckon. It’s not Low Shoulder, the satanists who prove so goofy and inconsequential that they eventually meet their bloody fate off-screen while the credits roll, an afterthought at best. And it’s not Jennifer, or at least not demon-Jennifer, who’s threat level is established when she cartoonishly devours a Boston Market rotisserie chicken in cold refrigerator light. It’s none of the obvious “big bads.” Instead, it’s how Jennifer makes Needy feel—Needy’s unspoken and sometimes confusing desires—that she must ultimately confront.
Needy’s fear propels the movie forward—her fear of dying, of having to kill to survive, of losing her best friend, or loving her best friend. It might be tempting to say she fears her own queerness, but I think it’d be more accurate to say that she fears how her queerness might affect her otherwise relatively predictable life. After all, she values the ease that comes with being exactly what people expect her to be—she begins the movie assuring the audience that “just two months ago, me, Jennifer, and my boyfriend Chip were completely normal…we were our yearbook pictures.” For those of us who came of age in an environment where heterosexuality was thrust onto us as the standard, there’s a very real fear—no matter how fleeting—that comes with stepping off of this well-trodden path into something more nebulous.
When I was in high school, I fell in love with one of my best friends. We were intimate with each other in a million little, overwhelmingly romantic, yet easily dismissible ways—we held hands, talked close, slept entwined, traded secrets. One night, at a house party, we snuck off to a secluded staircase to talk alone together. At the time, my friend had been seeing a boy a year older than us. When we finally rejoined the party, laughing and giddy, he called us out. “Where were you two,” he asked loudly, “making out?” He meant it as a joke (ie. he wasn’t funny), but also as a way to dig at my friend for choosing to spend time with me over him. I remember my cheeks reddening immediately, as if we’d been caught, although we hadn’t been making out; we wouldn’t allow ourselves to cross that particular line for many more months. Still, I felt embarrassment—and fear. It wasn’t that I was afraid of being queer, necessarily, but I was afraid someone would name my desire before I’d even had the chance to fully understand it. I didn’t want something that felt like it was wholly mine to be warped and twisted by somebody else's perspective—it made me feel uniquely exposed.
So yes, at this point in her life, Needy’s bisexuality scares her—but it also exhilarates her. It makes her feel like crying, screaming, kissing, running, levitating! (Oh no, I just unintentionally plagiarized the lyrics to The L Word's theme song, didn’t I?) And eventually, it saves her. A final showdown between the two former-BFFs may see Jennifer betrayed, but she makes sure to leave her mark on Needy in the form of a bite (gay). This physical connection lands Needy with powers that she uses to take down a group of capitalist, misogynistic white boys—while wearing a sleeveless hoodie, no less (also gay). The film’s ending invites you to imagine a future Needy, a Needy who has finally let go of fear—realizing that it doesn’t actually serve her—and embraced a life outside of expectation. A fuller (gayer) life.
What about Jennifer? Needy’s been described by viewers and critics as the doting, lovesick puppy, so it’s tempting to cast Jennifer as the “bitch,” the girl who’s all too ready to exploit her friend’s feelings for her because she’s addicted to the attention. But I don’t think either of these codifications carry weight. After all, the first time we see Jennifer, she’s grinning just as widely at Needy as Needy is at her (let’s not forget the little wave!). And even after Jennifer is changed, she seems to go after the boys who Needy likes with a bit more zealousness, eager to get rid of them.
If Needy is confused by her desires, then Jennifer is amused by hers. Maybe a bit too amused? On my most recent rewatch, I was struck by the fact that Jennifer is so easily able to identify what she wants and just as quickly, move on—as if pretending these impulses are fleeting or spontaneous could somehow armor her against rejection. Just think about the kiss—the one they share on Needy’s bed. Some may call it random, but I understand it as years of built up tension finally being released (these things don’t always happen at the most opportune times). Jennifer initiates it, but as soon as Needy pulls away, she’s cracking jokes as if it never really mattered.
This too, I understand. When the same friend I’d fallen in love with in high school came out to me years later, in college, by telling me she’d met a girl, I told her I was happy for her, that I “obviously didn’t care that she was gay!” and then immediately began blabbing about some guy I was seeing. It was a blatant, embarrassing display—she knew I wasn’t straight, we’d made out enough times for her to understand that on some level, even if I’d never said it—but by swinging harder into my perceived heterosexuality I was attempting to protect myself from the very real hurt I was experiencing. It was juvenile, but it was all I had to fortify myself with against what I viewed at the time as a rejection. Jennifer's bravado makes her appear flippant, uninvested, but subtext lets us in on her secret. In the end, Jennifer is controlled by her hunger: her naked, unavoidable wants and needs.
It’s worth noting that having Megan Fox—an openly bisexual public figure—in the role of Jennifer has undoubtedly affected the film’s standing in the queer lexicon. At first, her inclusion in the film was a ploy by execs to attract young male viewers—but it backfired. It turns out young boys didn’t want to see themselves mutilated and murdered over and over again on screen (spoiler alert: even Chip, who is basically benevolent, ends up “lasagna with teeth”). It was obvious that the execs didn’t understand who the movie was really for, which I think probably caused confusion among critics.2 Hence the movie’s poor showing at the box office and mostly negative contemporaneous reviews. Since then, Jennifer’s Body has experienced a renaissance, finding its audience by being properly recognized as a queer and feminist cult classic.
So, with it’s complicated history in both the zeitgeist of queer horror and in the way I’ve personally viewed it, what do I think of now when I think of Jennifer’s Body? I think of two girls, bodies pressed against each other, their breathing uneven. They’re standing on the precipice of an experience that will change the course of their lives forever. One asks the other, “are you scared?” The answer is yes, but she can’t bring herself to say it out loud. There’s fear, too, in the one who posed the question—fear and staggering vulnerability. So much, in fact, that she has to run away.
Jennifer’s Body isn’t perfect, but in reconsidering it I’ve come to admire how it contextualizes the uniquely confusing time between knowing something about yourself and naming it. I’ve learned to extend grace to myself for the mistakes I made during this period in my own life—is it so wild that I might extend the same grace towards a teenage slasher flick? Maybe, maybe not. It could go both ways.
Next week on The Yearning, Meg plays with the big dolls in a review of Syfy’s Chucky.
The Yearning wishes to recognize the loss of the light Leslie Jordan, who passed away this Monday, October 24th 2022. Jordan was a warm hearted, well spoken comedic genius, talented actor, and queer activist. Rest well.
Unfortunately, it’s also very much a product of its time, a fact underlined by the repeated use of a certain word that goes down like a lead balloon each time.
Of course some of the critics weren’t confused, they were just outright misogynistic.
Gorgeous writing & analysis as always. Love the personal connections as well ❤️🌈🌼
This is such a stunning piece that puts the movie in a new light for me. Brava!!