Exploitation movies have been variously described as trashy, improbable and flat-out fun — but feminist? Not often. With their catfighting biker chicks, sadistic serial killers and plot lines featuring nubile women under attack from sea creatures, these movies were made (in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s) for teenage boys — and, as such, were rarely subtle. In fact, their key appeal could be summed up in two words: “breasts” and “peril”.
It’s no surprise, then, that few were directed by women. But now comes Jennifer’s Body, a film firmly in the exploitation tradition, by feminist writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama. In it the most lusted-after girl in school (Megan Fox) turns into a man-eating demon; it is up to her bookish best friend to stop her devouring every guy in sight. The film blends monster movies with teen comedy and features such typical exploitation fare as close-ups of Fox’s cleavage, as well as an extended kiss between the two girls, apropos of nothing.
Cody won an Oscar for her 2007 teen comedy, Juno, and has said that “horror is a surprisingly feminist genre. The last person standing is usually a woman.” Kusama tells me that the film has “a feminist structure. We’re looking at the nature of these two girls’ agency in the world and it’s written by a woman and directed by a woman. To me those things are very powerful.”
But just how powerful? Can you really make a feminist exploitation movie? It’s certainly been tried before. In 1982 the feminist writer Rita Mae Brown and director Amy Holden Jones set out to satirise the usual slasher fare with their low-budget shocker, The Slumber Party Massacre. The plot is predictable: a group of girls get naked in the showers and are harassed by a psycho. But the attempts to send up the genre are clear, too. The film features a drill-wielding killer who signals his arrival with a blood-soaked Barbie doll, before being symbolically castrated — his weapon cut off with a sword. The ending also leaves us not with the sad, sullied “final girl” of horror tradition (Cody’s last girl standing) but with three strong female survivors — a bumper crop.
What of Jennifer’s Body? It’s also full of sex and violence, but it’s much more difficult to find a political subtext. Kusama says there was subversive intent in the kiss between the two female leads, but for many it will just look like two hot girls kissing. And, as its title suggests, the film revolves around one woman’s physique — especially the bosom that Jennifer refers to as “smart bombs”.
Despite Cody’s feminist outlook, the film centres on one of the most tired exploitation tropes. The two female characters aren’t helping each other: they’re engaged in a vicious battle to the death. In the end it’s just another catfight. —