Dossier » Horror
“PMS Isn’t Real” and Other Lessons of Jennifer’s Body
A Feminist Examination of the Politics of Horror
"Politics and art, like forms of knowledge, construct fiction, that is to say material rearrangements of signs and images, relationships between what is seen and what is said, between what is done and what can be done" – Jacques Rancièrei
As Peggy Orenstein notes in her New York Times Magazine article, The Hillary Lesson, Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 “embodied both the complications and contradictions of female success.” It revealed not only the limitations still in place for women, but the vitriol evoked by pushing against those barriers. The majority of the criticism for Clinton ignored her politics and policies, but rather seems best represented by the “life’s a bitch. Don’t vote for one” T-shirts and the steel thighed nutcrackers in her image. These cleverly misogynistic critiques reveal a deep rooted discomfort with women’s power. Clinton’s efforts to escape the gendered criticism apparent in her ever-changing choice of skirt versus pant-suits, the crying versus not crying, and presence/absence of her daughter Chelsea on the platform, did nothing to further her cause. The moment she stepped upon a platform only her womanhood became visible.
As such it became critical that Clinton be not only a “good politician,” but also as a “good woman” two ideals which the election coverage revealed incompatible. The binary echoes the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, frequently examined in feminist scholarship, to which women are expected to adhere. The Virgin marks the passive, pure woman while the Whore represents the assertive and therefore dirty woman. In such a system, the woman politician inevitably emerges as the iconic Whore, a figure undeserving of respect which elicits fear in breaking with the traditional passiveness of “good” womanhood. Yet, real life demands a blending of these categories as women strive to assert themselves without tainting their personhood. They are trapped because they have not yet crafted their own definition of Woman but rather seek, without avail, to find a place within the hegemonic system.
This entrapment serves as the primary impetus of the 2009 horror film Jennifer’s Body, directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Diablo Cody. Symptomatic of the 2008 election and the issues it raised regarding the relationship of the representation and definition of Woman, the film echoes theorist Peggy Phelan’s assertion that
Representation functions to make gender, and sexual difference more generally, secure and securely singular— which is to say, masculine…Representation tries to…suture the gap between subjectivity and the Real. The common desire to look to representation to confirm one’s reality is never satisfied; for representation cannot reproduce the Real (173).
They aim to provide a new image of Woman which acknowledges historical representations and through confronting those ideals emerges as an original and potentially more real definition of Woman. Jennifer’s Body presents the story of Jennifer; a teenage girl who literally feeds upon her would be lovers. After being mistaken as a Virgin and sacrificed to Satan in exchange for success by the members of the indie rock band Low Shoulder, Jennifer becomes possessed by a hungry demon. She uses her overt sexuality to lure teenage boys to the woods where she promises sex and instead devours their innards.
While this may seem a simple reversal engaged in so-called “male bashing,” a careful analysis of the film reveals it a carefully constructed political text which seeks to undo the reifying effects of narrative cinema and in particular the horror genre. In regards to narrative cinema, the film primarily seeks to expose the harmful impact of the supremacy of the “male gaze.” Defined by Laura Mulvey in the 1975 essay “Visual Pleasures in Narrative Cinema”, the “male gaze” supports the “active/passive division of labor” as it is the male character that furthers action and the woman who responds (61). This makes sense as traditionally the ‘ideal spectator’ is defined as male, white, and heterosexual (Dolon, 1). Men gain pleasure from watching the men on screen as they are “not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of a more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego,” a role model in which they recognize a reflection of their own selves as they are taught that they are active, powerful, and strong, therefore possessing the ability to elide with the man on screen (Mulvey, 63). This supports the rigid definitions of gender roles which ensure that women remain passive possessions of their male counterparts.
To this end, cinema dissects actresses into fetishizable pieces such as faces, breasts, legs, and buttocks, denying them treatment as a complete person which would allow for the identification of the female spectator. Her containment within the screen renders her safe, captured and tamed; therefore no longer holding a threat to the male spectator who is invited to enjoy and examine her confinement. The female spectator therefore finds herself trapped between her reality and her representation onscreen. As Dolon notes, “if she identifies with the narrative’s objectified, passive woman, she places herself in a masochistic position. If she identifies with the male hero, she becomes complicit in her own indirect objectification” (13).
Kusama and Cody tackle this trap via confronting the objectification of women in film and society utilizing horror as a lens. They implicate the form as participatory in hegemonic reification, establishing it as an inherently political form. Further, as Horror operates thematically in the world of fantasy allowing for the construction of new cultural norms and identities which are not bound to the actualities of the world, it allows them to escape the trap of realism. Jill Dolon defines realism as “a conservative force that reproduces and reinforces dominant cultural relations (134).
Unfortunately, the genre frequently utilizes realistic representation as a means of establishing recognition for the audience and thus participates in perpetuating dominant ideology rather than taking advantage of the potential for political progression the fantasy element allows.
The horror film presents the liminal, the monstrous, and the uncontrollable in order to introduce their existence to contemporary culture while simultaneously inoculating the threat and restoring order through the films finale. This restorative quality of the horror film explains its popularity during periods of dynamic change as it forces society to come face to face with its demons, literally. The 1930s-50s yielded now classic Monster Films in response to World and subsequent Cold Wars which featured individual figures as icons of evil to the American people. The 1960s saw the Haunted House which questioned the truth of reality as the age of psychedelic philosophy and Vietnam disrupted American peace and the 1980s yielded the Slasher as First Wave feminism called for women’s agency and sexual assertion. The clear connection between unrest and Horror lies in its ability to, as Isabel Cristina Pinedo points out in, Recreational Terror, “give free rein to culturally repressed feelings such as terror and rage. It constructs situations where these taboo feelings are sanctioned” (41). The period surrounding the Democratic Primaries and Presidential Election of 2008, which awakened anxieties over race and gender, remains true to history. It primarily yielded the Zombie film, warning voters of the dangers of relinquishing their right to individual thought, and the Slasher, reminding the American people of the responsibilities of their gender and the importance of phallic power.
Jennifer’s Body emerges in reaction to this trend in contemporary horror, a direct reflection upon the codification of women in film as raised by the 2008 election. In the film Kusama and Cody manage to enforce the possibility of a new norm which does not saddle women with the choice of “virgin” or “whore” but rather allows for the emergence of a new femininity defined by the women themselves rather than through the desires of their male counterparts. Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, is “a mean girl, a bad girl, a popular girl, a dream girl –the one every other girl envies and every boy wants. But, she is not the heroine of the movie, and it is not her predicament that makes it so interesting and original” (Scott).
The film hinges on the experience of Jennifer’s comely best friend Needy. The film opens with a voice-over from Needy which overlays footage of her incarceration in an asylum to which she has been admitted for killing Jennifer with a box cutter. She tells the story via flashbacks and thus controls the narrative. This immediately destroys any pretense of objectivity or omniscience, two standard techniques of popular narrative cinema which reinforce the male gaze as the dominant mechanism of filmic pleasure. By attributing the narrative to Needy, the story becomes biased, fragmented, and unauthoritative, thus immediately freeing the story from status reinforcement.
Needy begins the film much as her name suggests, in need of constant confirmation and approval from Jennifer. Her boyfriend, Chip, plays in the marching band, she wears glasses and has frizzy hair, and her clothes never seem to match. She is, in short, the typical sidekick. Yet, through the course of the film Needy transforms into an active agent in control of her own future. Her transformation dominates the film, and as one critic noted, “This is Needy’s story, not Jennifer’s – and she’s the reason to see the movie, no matter who’s on the posters” (MacDonald). Her unlikely triumph over the Jennifer Monster presents a parallel to the unlikely reversals and usurpations the film achieves in terms of form and genre.
Kusama and Cody achieve this new definition primarily through a blending technique of horror subgenres. They investigate the “Final Girl,” “Rape Revenge,” and “Possession” films as defined by Carol Clover in Men Women and Chain Saws and the “Monstrous-Feminine” film coined by Barbara Creed. Jennifer’s Body thus serves as both homage to the horror as well as a detailed critique of the norms of the genre. As Cody noted in a September New York Times Interview “the tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there” (Orange). Yet, the film strikes an impressive balance between recognizing the trope and undermining its typical effect. An analysis of the tropes utilized and the film’s undermining techniques evinces Jennifer’s Body as a political text of feminist discourse.
The “Final Girl” format refers to films such as John Carpenter’s Halloween and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street which depict a powerful female who struggles and wins the fight for her own survival, while simultaneously reifying socio-moral norms. The “good girls” live, the “sluts” are slaughtered, and ultimately the male forces Lori and Nancy face never actually die but continue to haunt them through at least 8 sequels each. Clover stresses the masculinity/androgyny of the Final Girl, which she asserts suggests “a loosening of the category of the feminine (63). She adopts masculine traits which allows the male audience member to identify with her, while her feminine form allows him to experience the, for him, culturally taboo sensation of terror.
I assert that such a reading dismisses the cyclicality and phallogoncentrism of the Final Girl slasher. “Phallogocentrism organizes phallic authority in language, and the phallus becomes the symbolic object of exchange in a family and social system that denies women agency (Dolon, 12). In the slasher the knife or similar weapon symbolizes phallic authority and as such the heroine spends the film trying to take possession of the object while the male villain seeks to retain his control over it. Far from “loosening the category of the feminine” the films operate according to Freud’s theory of phallus envy which essentializes the penis/phallus as locus of powers. The films reassert women’s “lack” of the phallus and man’s continued control of it, thus reaffirming the status quo.
Thus the importance of the promise of a sequel, for the Final Girl must be subdued as, traditionally, she gains possession of the phallic symbol of the film (Freddy Krueger’s glove or Michael Meyers knife), thus adopting a masculine persona in order to survive. The recognition of the masculine therefore serves as the source of empathy and comfort for the male spectator, as the film implies that only traditionally masculine traits could stop the monster. Of course, the Final Girl is not a man and thus the film ensures the security of masculinity with the promise of a sequel. It ensures that her femininity will be restored as she casts off the phallic symbol in an attempt to return to “normal,” i.e. passive and feminine. Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers therefore serve as reminders for women to “behave.” The female spectator may empathize with the heroines and rejoice at the promise of freedom at the end of each film, but the impending sequel looms as a reminder of their return to passiveness. As such, both the spectator and the Final Girl never actually free herself from the cycle of violence and reification. In other words, she wins the battle but will perpetually lose the war.
Jennifer’s Body immediately establishes Needy as the final girl through the flashback technique which posits her as the sole survivor. Like most Final Girls Needy is not depicted as overly-sexual or beautiful, but rather as an intelligent, responsible and “good” girl. Interestingly, the film shows Needy having sex with her boyfriend Chip violating a central tenet of the Final Girl film in which Virginity equals survival. Further, Needy does not face a supernatural male monster, but rather a female one in the form of Jennifer. Jennifer has been constructed by men and thus the battle emerges between the male construct of Woman and reality of woman as represented by Needy.
The film proceeds as a dissection of the dangerous relationship between women in a world in which the expectations of a woman are defined by her male counterparts. It pits the ideal woman, Jennifer, against the real woman, Needy thus presenting the battle not between male and female forces, as in the traditional Final Girl film, but between hegemony and actuality. In that confrontation Needy realizes she does not wish to subscribe to the portrait of ideal womanhood which has rendered her best friend monstrous. She has been constructed, to fulfill the Myth of womanhood, in both body and deed, through the actions of men who utilize her body as a tool for their own success. Yet, their ignorance of the actualities of her body and her experiences unleashes a demon. i This highlights the danger of external definitions as they do not take into account reality, but instead operate in the unattainable level of fantasy. Jennifer’s body is a male fantasy, but as she subscribes to their desires she discovers the power inherent in that fantasy which allows her to twist their fantasy into a nightmare.
The nightmare’s climax occurs on prom night when Jennifer eats Chip and bites Needy. Like the bite of a zombie which morphs the victim into a fellow monster, the bite passes some of Jennifer’s power to Needy. She gains Jennifer’s activeness and assertion without the monstrous trapping of perfect hair and body, thereby emerging from the confrontation victorious. As such, she is able to follow Jennifer home and kill her. When Needy kills Jennifer, she stays dead. The film offers no threat of a sequel, no un-killable villain whose return undoes the liberation of the previous film. To ensure the finality of her actions, during the credits, we see the slaughtered bodies of Low Shoulder. After escaping the asylum Needy finds and uses the knife the band wielded on Jennifer to slay them. Less an act of vengeance than self preservation, Needy eliminates any further threat to her person, and, symbolically, to the new vision of Woman she represents. She inherited the strength of the monster without becoming the monster herself and in destroying the source of monstrification, there will be no sequel, no indoctrinating cycle, as she exits the film still in possession of agency and strength, preserving a new vision of woman, a new “normal.”
The paranormal serves as the basis of the “Possession” film which typically centers upon women’s’ bodies, as evidenced by the embryonic imagery of Poltergeist, the mystery mother of The Omen, and the sexualized distortion of Regan in The Exorcist. The concept of invasion and violation necessitates the female form and its dark, mysterious orifices. According to Clover, “being impressionable or emotionally open is gendered feminine; therefore, emotional openness will be represented as female bodily openness” (101). The openness allows for the invasion of the woman, whose acceptance of the occult contrasts the closed-mindedness of the man. Through the film, which utilizes her body as locus, the man comes to accept the supernatural, frequently in a type of symbolic rebirth. As such, “possession” films relegate women to the function of apocalyptic gateway for men to close.
As the title suggests, the film does center upon Jennifer’s body, however Kusama and Cody do not utilize it as a vehicle for male enlightenment but rather to affirm the status of woman as possession. Jennifer is not an innocent like Regan or Carol Anne who represent corruptible figures; she is already corrupted. In a sense, she has always been possessed, not by a demon, but by the expectation of Woman to which she subscribes in her social and sexual behaviors. Ironically, unlike Regan, Jennifer becomes more gorgeous in her possession and therefore more desirable. The demon renders Jennifer’s beauty a snare which entraps those men who fall prey to the myth of beauty. After years of constructing herself to be the perfect lust object for men she utilizes her body to satiate her own lust for power.
The men of Jennifer’s Body do not come to accept the supernatural until their imminent death; there can be no redemption such as the Exorcist offers Karras or Poltergeist issues Steve. They do not consider that something so desirable could be so deadly and thus when faced with the supernatural, the boys disregard it. For instance, when Jennifer lures the Jock to the woods and the animals encircle them and when rats line up to watch her interlude with the Goth, the boys see the danger and yet persist in their sexual endeavors. Their closed-ness persists, yet unlike in the traditional possession film they are not reborn through a confrontation with the feminine, but rather destroyed by their belief in the veracity of the feminine as a force over which they remain safely in control.
The “Rape Revenge” film acts as a negotiation of male control of the female body as it follows a woman’s violent fight for retribution of wrongs committed against her person by a specific man or group of men. Frequently this form explores the juxtaposition of the city and the country, with the victim representing the upper-class, sophisticated city dweller and the villain(s) the more animalistic country folk. The clash therefore emerges between the civilized and the primitive, the moral and amoral, and the restrained and the impulsive. The rape serves as the vehicle by which the marginalized country inhabitants establish dominance over the more politically and economically powerful city dwellers. Films such as Lipstick, Last House on the Left, and The Hills Have Eyes serve as prime examples of the sub-genre which plays on the fear of the rural in an ever more cosmopolitan world.
Jennifer’s Body pays particular homage to the 1978 Rape Revenge film I Spit on Your Grave in which the urban protagonist, Jennifer, seeks vengeance on the country ‘hicks’ who rape and leave her for dead. She uses seduction to lure the men into a trap which ultimately results in castration. The clear parallels hardly need pointing out; however the two key differences between the films necessitate discussion. In Jennifer’s Body, Jennifer and Needy live in particularly rural suburbs while the rock band Low Shoulder comes from the city. This initial reversal highlights the dangers of the metropolitan as their predatory intent becomes clear. They chose the country as they imagined it the only place where they could find a “pure” girl to sacrifice, relying upon their urban appeal to ensure her complicity. Ironically, it is Jennifer’s desire to be city-like which renders her complicit. She voraciously reads Cosmopolitan, and follows Low Shoulder into their van because it is what she believes a sexually independent, sophisticated city girl would do. The film thus posits that the learned behavior of the city and its expectations of sexuality and gender do not enlighten but rather threaten natural development.
Additionally, Jennifer’s Body usurps the Rape Revenge through a series of displacements. The indie rock band replaces the gang of hicks, and the literal rape is replaced with a metaphoric rape as they stab Jennifer to death. This distinction is critical to the success of Jennifer’s Body in usurping rather than falling prey to the form. Voyeuristic sadism pervades the onscreen rape which presents the ultimate example of the fetishization and domination of women. Even when they fight back, their efforts prove futile as their bodies literally become a vehicle by which Man marks his superiority and ownership. Frequently filmmakers choose to shoot rape scenes like pornography and focus upon the experience of the woman, yet while pornography places the emphasis upon women’s pleasure, the rape places emphasis upon their pain. Further, a series of jump shots display the rape by well edited footage which highlights the various parts of the woman’s body engaged in the action. The scene dissects the actress to her sexual components and reminds the audience that she is subject to the will of men, regardless of how suave and independent she may seem.
By denying the actual rape, Kusama and Cody allow for Jennifer’s body to remain whole and therefore avoid the fetishistic dissection of the actress. The metaphoric rape eliminates the sexual component of the action and reveals the power politics at play within the onscreen rape. The film thus serves as a deconstruction of the rape revenge film. It strips the form to its base element, i.e. domination, in order to expose the fetishizing and sadistic effects of the subgenre. Interestingly, Jennifer never goes after her actual attackers but rather wreaks vengeance upon any man she encounters who would reduce her to a sexual object. The film’s male figures represent American hegemony as, aside from the exchange student who serves as Jennifer’s practice meal, they are all white, upper middle class, heterosexual men; i.e., those who retain political power and agency within the American system. The film therefore utilizes the male as icon for the system it rejects. The struggle against hegemonic codification typically yields the monstrous in the classic horror, yet again; Kusama and Cody manage to undermine the form.
The “Monstrous-Feminine” examines not only the monstrosity of femininity but also the Woman as Monster. In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed carefully points out that although “the monstrous feminine is constructed as an active rather than passive figure” it does not render the monster ‘feminist’ but rather its “presence…speaks to us more about male fears than about female desire or feminine subjectivity” (7). The Woman as Monster acts in a way which shatters the expectations of womanhood, often exuding sexuality and confidence, frequently becoming the desired object of man. Yet, the Monster leaves destruction in her wake and proves incapable of fulfilling masculine desire. Thus the “male fears” Creed discusses emerge as a fear of the release of Women’s sexual desire and claiming of power for the threat of destruction they pose to hegemonic institutions.
In her possession, Jennifer most certainly becomes monstrous, an embodiment of what Julia Kristeva refers to as the “abject” or that which disrupts identity by violating boundaries.ii Confrontation with the abject demands purgation. Interestingly the film thus posits both Jennifer and Low Shoulder’s sacrifice in the realm of abjection. Upon reappearing in Needy’s kitchen after Low Shoulder’s would-be-sacrifice, Jennifer’s wounds ooze blood and she vomits black slime as she expulses Low Shoulder’s violation of her body. Yet, although Jennifer defies expectations of womanhood in becoming an active and deviant character, the film presents no purgation of her deeds, seemingly condoning her actions as necessary disruption of the identity of Woman.
Jennifer’s monstrosity takes form as the perfect “babe.” This follows the horror tradition of the gorgeous female monster juxtaposed with the deformed male monster. Her power is in her sexuality, by rendering her hideous she poses no threat as she does not interest the male conscious. The ugly woman is invisible, the gorgeous fetishized. As such, the female monster must retain beauty but unlike typical horror films in which the female monster can ultimately be contained by the male protagonist, in Jennifer’s Body they prove unable to master her. Thus the film reveals the hyper-sexualized and distorted image of female beauty as monstrous, a construct of men which they in turn cannot control.
Furthering Kusama and Cody’s undermining of male control, they refute popular expectation by denying the voyeuristic promise of the genre: the unimpeded shot of the naked female body. Indeed, many male bloggers commented on their dissatisfaction with the film because they did not “Even get to see Megan Fox’s boobs.” The title seemed to provide the promise of scopophillic fetishization, yet, like so many other factors of the film, it did not follow through with the expectations it erected therefore forcing audiences to confront the political implications of those expectations. For the men in the audience this meant the fetishizing and torturing of the onscreen woman as a means to cinematic pleasure. As men have traditionally been the ideal spectator, particularly of the horror, the film lures them in with the title and then submits them to a feminine experience as they watch the men onscreen become objectified and violated as they would have done to Jennifer. Hopefully such an experience will allow the male spectator to recognize the damaging effects of his perspective and desires and thus support the move towards a new means of cinematic representation and feminine definition. Certainly the women in the audience recognize the revolutions for which the film calls and experience genuine excitement that they are encouraged to “give rein” to their “terror and rage” through identification with both Needy and Jennifer.
The modern woman stands between Needy and Jennifer, struggling to fulfill societal expectation while simultaneously seeking an individual identity. Like Needy they want to kill Jennifer, to eliminate her iconic implications, and free themselves from her shadow. Yet Jennifer’s Body specifies that Jennifer is not the problem, but the systems and individuals which construct her. The film’s call for a new definition and a destruction of the confining Ideal of Woman represents the current political climate which asserts that women can do anything they want, while still paying them less than their male counterparts, hazing those who undertake traditionally masculine endeavors, and fetishizing those who adhere to the Myth of Woman. In such an environment Clinton’s campaign was doomed from the start to represent the “almost” of women’s liberation.
Reminiscent of the anti-Hillary publicity, the Baltimore Sun Critic asserted that “The one perfect aspect of ‘Jennifer’s Body’ is its title: no one is going to like this movie for its brain” (Sragow). Such a reading is chauvinistic and flawed. Through the masterful and deliberate deconstruction of subgenres of horror the film attacks the reifying effect of cinema on the construct of Womanhood highlighting that “dominant ideology has been naturalized as nonideology” (Dolon, 15). In Jennifer’s Body, Woman emerges as a monstrous creation of the hegemony. “PMS isn't real… it was invented by the boy-run media to make us seem like we're crazy” Jennifer tells Needy. A witty quip for Jennifer but it also serves as the film’s thesis as it expresses the film’s concern for the intertwined and codependent politics of women’s identity and media. It disrupts the representation of women, unsettling the naturalization of the Myth and condemning the Media participation in upholding and assisting the restrictive definition of Woman. As such, it represents the abject and was dutifully purged from movie theatres within three weeks of its release. Like Clinton’s campaign, Jennifer’s Body fell prey to hegemonic fears of feminine agency. However, also like Clinton’s campaign, its existence challenges institutions, initiating change and igniting resistance.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972)
Clover, Carol. Men Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992)
Cody, Diablo in “Taking Back the Knife: Girls Gone Gory” by Michelle Orange for The New York Times. September 6, 2009.
Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge, 1993)
Dolon, Jill. The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: university of Michigan press, 1991)
Kristeva, Julie. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)
MacDonald, Moira. “Nerdy and Needy are Neat in ‘Jennifer’s Body’” in The Seattle Times, Monday September 21, 2009
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)
Orenstein, Peggy. “The Hillary Lesson” in The New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2008.
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York and London: Routledge, 1993)
Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing (Albany, State University Press of New York, 1997)
Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of the Aesthetics trans. Gabriel Rockhill (New York: Continuum, 2004)
Scott, A.O. “Hell is Other People, Especially the Popular Girl” in The New York Times, September 18, 2009.
Sragow, Michael. “‘Jennifer’s Body’ is dodgy hipster horror film” in The Baltimore Sun, September 17, 2009
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