“Killing’s in the Name”: Karyn Kusama, Diablo Cody, and the legacy of Jennifer’s Body post #MeToo.
February 5, 2021 ● Emma Doyle
With uncomfortable similarity to 2020, 2009 was an objective shitshow. From political genocides in Baghdad to the death and subsequent de-throning of pop monarch Michael Jackson. That this was foreboding the new decade can be unanimously agreed, and not even the election of Obama was tonic enough for a year that felt like a colossal waste of time.
Reconvening over ten years later, a less-publicised US export in the form of Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody’s horror-comedy, Jennifer’s Body has been the subject of an evaluative overhaul which is prompting us to rethink the feminist agenda. So how, in 2021, has this story transformed from campy slasher to achieving cult status? And how is it reshaping conversations surrounding rape culture, sexual autonomy, and toxic femininity for a generation of women?
Sidestepping total adulation, there were executive decisions even before Jennifer’s Body’s theatrical release which defy comprehension as to how they were green-lit. When seeking distance from the disastrous marketing preceding the film’s delivery, the slew of asinine campaigns aimed at the rampant libido of teenage boys which director Kusama called “painful” makes it challenging to remember that it was intended for a female audience.
Kusama, Cody, and chosen lead Megan Fox were hindered from the start by what a disordered brotherhood of gynophobic connoisseurs classed as controversy. Born Brook Busey in 1978, Diablo Cody adopted her pen name while documenting her time working as a Minneapolis stripper in the early 2000s. Far from being revered as empowered, Cody’s history was blacklisted and critiqued as distasteful. Kusama was dragged by association, while Fox received a more problematic treatment. Although last June she released a statement via Instagram noting that Transformers franchise director Michael Bay “never preyed upon [her] in what I felt was a sexual manner”, Fox’s assumed status as naive wannabe entered the territory of unreasonable degradation. Evidently, the objectification faced by a relative novice simply for being female meant making her the target of an open letter from three former colleagues of Bay, proclaiming her “dumb-as-a-rock” and “the queen of talking trailer trash” qualified as justifiable.
Despite the occasional stomach-knotting levels of cringe, Jennifer’s Body was, thematically speaking, a decade ahead of its time. Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) and her virginal disciple Anita ‘Needy’ Lesnicki are the fictional Devil’s Kettle’s prime example of underlying toxicity in sophomore female friendships. Needy is (almost) expertly portrayed by a post-Mamma Mia! Amanda Seyfried, if we ignore Diablo Cody’s confounding take on Protestant lingo. Regardless, Needy’s sycophantic endorsement of Jennifer despite her concerted efforts in - spoiler alert - deploying demonic powers to seduce and then eat a number of male school peers, ending with Needy’s boyfriend Chip, is a dynamic more relatable than it is to admit. Often practiced by girls with a fear of losing influence among their equally neurotic acquaintances, it also afflicts girls who are convinced they can gain an ounce of validation from those in the upper echelons. Just with more gratuitous slaughter.
Most crucial to my personal dialogue, Jennifer’s Body enraptured a broad cross-section of preteens throughout the English-speaking world by propagating some of the most liberal ideas concerning bodily autonomy, sex, and its occupational hazards that film-based media had encountered - and from a truly feminist perspective. At the age of ten, I had no preconceptions about how I was going to investigate my sexuality other than with the guidance of the vapid heteronormative model I had been drip-fed since gaining independent thought.
To see two girls kissing not only with assuredness, but such sincerity - a glimmer of lived experience which I feel Kusama was trying to intimate - still feels like a victory for those of us acquainting ourselves with that indeterminate queerness when we lacked the vocabulary. Perhaps the kiss between Needy and Jennifer, which unfolded with the latter exercising rare vulnerability in disclosing that she had been blessed with unexplained powers by the Devil, was simply another of Cody’s authorial touches. Perhaps its aim was to interweave an even deeper manipulation into Jennifer and Needy’s affiliation. Either way, the introduction of men to the equation actuates rapid escalation is a claim I can substantiate.
In a brief synopsis, Jennifer’s Body runs like this:
Needy and Jennifer are Devil’s Kettle High School’s least likely friends, but as we’re nauseatingly reminded throughout, “sandbox love is forever”. Needy’s floundering boyfriend Chip makes intermittent appearances, only to reinforce how his presence is mildly irritating. Jennifer is the school’s designated bicycle, which is why when Adam Brody abandons The O.C. to tour with a new band, Low Shoulder, he and Jennifer immediately gravitate towards each other’s raw charisma at a local bar. The Brody Bunch then set the bar alight, kidnapping Jennifer under the misconception that she’s a virgin adequate for sacrificing in exchange for fame and prestige. Due to this erroneous mishap, Jennifer is skewered alarmingly but survives, on account of being promoted to the rank of succubus and being neither front nor back door celibate.
From here, most details have been covered. Jennifer embarks on an indiscriminate killing spree, tirelessly exacting her rage on those least deserving of it (see: Chip), with Needy eventually achieving karmic reimbursement by murdering Jennifer, preventing more needless deaths in the community. So what, precisely, does this represent?
Prior to #MeToo becoming a cultural turning point for women’s suffering being acknowledged publicly, sexual misconduct was minimised or blatantly ignored. Pre-Weinstein, Kusama, and Cody spearheaded this shift in attitude, only to face derision. We were introduced to a new breed of predator, the creepy band dude, who would operate covertly under the protection of anonymous social media sites as a way of grooming impressionable, underage fans for sex. Although the punch didn’t land then, Jennifer’s Body lashed out with virulence, identifying the warning signs of such depraved actions, and bringing home the realisation that evil can wear any face - even Adam Brody’s.
Jennifer’s retaliation was a little disproportionate, sure. But one stage of grief is anger, and it doesn’t take much rumination to see how inflicting equivalent pain to that you’ve endured might just feel like getting even (if you had retractable fangs which you could wield on demand).
Yes, Jennifer’s Body is a flawed product of conflicting interests. Far from being watertight, the plot has so many holes that I could fold it up and use it as a sieve. Are critics at fault for ridiculing the more arduous parts of the script? Absolutely not. But what can’t be negated in the context of social justice is that today, it’s a film that stands for the reclamation of the power seized by our aggressors. Kusama and Cody taught us that it’s okay to kiss girls if we want to, that rage is a natural emotion, and to never trust musicians. Hell may be a teenage girl. It may also be a resentful child or a fully-grown woman. It’s okay, because we wrote it.
Emma Doyle ● Writer
Instagram: @emma.j.doyle @slowrom_ance