The Films of Julia Ducournau: Alpha

 

            The third film in my analysis of the films of Julia Ducournau is the allegorically harrowing Alpha. This Palme d’Or nominated film reaches back into the recent past, to bring AIDS and gay panic once again to the forefront, simultaneously intertwining COVID and trans panic into a salient cultural metaphor for our current context. While the overall application of this metaphor is clunky and less focused than in her previous work, Ducournau crafts a visually arresting film with a captivating narrative that seizes the viewer. This brief paper will engage in the historical underpinnings of Ducournau’s pandemic analogy and its similarities with other historical events, while contemplating the film’s conceit that grief is a Durkheimian “social fact”.

 

PLOT

            When Alpha (Melissa Boros), a 13-year-old second generation Algerian immigrant, living in the north of France, gets a homemade tattoo at a party, her Doctor mother (Golshifteh Farahani) fears she may have contracted a new devastating blood born disease that slowly turns the body to stone. The same one that took her Uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim). As they wait for the test results, Alpha gets bullied and ostracized in school while the mother and daughter pair begin to be haunted by Amin. A spectral vision induced by the emotional volatility of the situation and the trauma surrounding Amin’s death 8 years prior. The question is, can both mother and daughter be able to move past this grief, or shall it consume them in a “red wind” storm.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

 Ducournau’s third feature cements her visual and storytelling style. Like her previous installments, Alpha weaves a narrative that intersects time periods in a nonlinear structure. Jumping back and forth in time to increase tension around a traumatically transformative event, parallels the social reaction to major health scares and outbreaks over the last 45 years. This section will engage the similarities between the events depicted and the variety of health crises we have experienced in the last half-century; including the scapegoating of the ill, and the socio-political polarization in the wake of each tragedy.

From AIDS to COVID    

Ducournau refreshingly does not specify a particular time period in which Alpha takes place. Instead, she leaves context clues through car models, clothing, building architecture, and a lack of modern technology that indicates the film taking place prior to the turn of the 21^st century. This adds credibility to the marble disease in the film being a narrative allegory for HIV/AIDS (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/ Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) which was first identified and garnered increasing attention beginning in 1981.

All those who lived through this period, and were aware,[1]were affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Global fear gripped nations. That fear led to the scapegoating and vilifying of the LGBTQAI+ community in ways the current Queer youth may think hyperbolic, but were all vitriolically and venomously validated by both the general public and the broader social institutions at the time. According to Halkitis (2019), the overt homophobia that both preceded and followed the HIV/AIDS crisis, contributed to the prolonged suffering of the community. Because some of the early cases of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS were first found in gay men, that gave the vocal supporters of religious and anti-gay policies justification to condemn the LGBTQAI+ community as immoral and feel vindication in their bigotry. This is reflected in the CDC first labeling the disease GRID (Gay Related Immunodeficiency).  The misinformation that followed, allowed for a lack of Government support services in the community, forcing a grass roots information campaigns and outreach that saved lives. The Government eventually came around to disseminating the information about the disease and started to pay (a modicum of) attention to this issue; primarily because it started to show up outside of the LGBTQAI+ community, moved beyond drug addicts and in addition to those needing blood transfusions. At the time, the Queer community constructed best practices (which included condom use, and disclosure of sexual partnership) various organizations, and a helpline. Those grassroots behaviors that were born out of necessity in the face of institutional apathy, became foundational to the Government’s response to the crisis. This was extended around the globe but no more so than in African countries where cultural norms and superstitions about virginal sex as a cure, allowed the disease to spread quickly.

              The disease’s origin and the communities around where it initially spread fueled racist, homophobic and classist discrimination. This vacillated from ignorance and violent intolerance to describing AIDS as a “deserved” biblical genocide.  This was all in service of minimizing government involvement by defining the core of the issue as a personal choice. “Culture” and “lifestyle choices” were used as a political dog whistle to mean non-white (specifically Black) and gay. Meanwhile, drug addiction was framed as poor financial choices. This tendency to identify social problems, as a personal problem, is consistent with the white cis/het supremacy that founded the United States; allowing for a dehumanization of these groups. This continued for decades as these groups were perceived as a threat to the foundational core identity of upwardly mobile, productive able-bodied, straight white men. The accusation of anything else is met with violence, ridicule and ostracization. During the height of infection, AIDS was removed from obituary causes of death (along with any same sex partners); labeling it instead as the illness contracted after the individual was immunocompromised.    

As an allegory, The Marbling disease in Alpha functions in a similar fashion both medically and socially to HIV/AIDS:

·         The disease is depicted to be transmitted by blood or sexual fluids

·         The characters we follow that contract the disease are shown to either share needles for drugs or tattooing, or it is heavily implied that they are gay (Both Alpha’s teacher and her Uncle Amin).

·         Once Alpha is suspected by her classmates, she is ostracized. Students flee the pool in a panic when Alpha bleeds in the water and move out of her way as she walks into the classroom.

·         In scenes where the public interacts with people with this disease, there is palpable fear and distancing from the person. One person allowing someone who contracted the virus to sit next to them by offhandedly saying that “It’s fine. I’m dead anyway.”   

·         Much like the cultural norms, misinformation and superstition that allowed for HIV/AIDS to spread in African Countries, Alpha’s Grandmother, an Algerian immigrant talks about “The Red Wind” that gets trapped in the body, and the only way to fix it is to pray, bathe and drink lots of water

Because Durcournau was writing and shooting this film in 2024, it is difficult to not also make a connection to our more recent pandemic, COVID-19, and the lessons that we learned (or more likely did not learn) in the years in between.

            The commonality between all major global events, be they pandemic, World War or economic crisis, is that, in order to overcome the horrific event(s) there needs to be an intersection between every observable/measurable aspect of a society from the Micro (individual) level, the Mezzo (community/group level) and the Macro (Institutional Global level). During wartime, it was the interlocking mechanism of civilian industrial logistics and the military war effort. During an economic crisis there are government subsidies, bailouts and one instance of an increase in a variety of social programs (New Deal). With pandemics, the Government would work on developing a vaccine and make it readily available to everyone (thus eating the cost) then give every household an amount of money to stay at home and where masks in public to stop the spread.  In hindsight, writing this 6+ years after the initial lockdown orders of 2020, while these things did eventually happen, and we reached the desired (but tenuous) threshold of vaccine parity (that may now be put in jeopardy given new 2026 guidelines), we still had to go through a period of anomie.

            Anomie is a Durkheimian term to mean normlessness or chaos. Societal periods of anomie typically arise during periods of social change during a transition between either a type and/or form of leadership. Minor forms of anomie take place during the change of leadership within an established system. For example, a new political party leadership in positions of established power. The focused emphasis and exercise of that power is going to be different, but it is (supposedly) not going to deconstruct the entire system itself. The normlessness experienced here is in the unknown way the new authority will exercise their established power. Major Anomie is where there is a break in the fundamental structures of power. Where the system that delegates and defines that power is removed. This may lead to anarchy, causing the established institutions to crumble, becoming then a steppingstone to a greater anomic effect as the established norms that allow for a civil society are obliterated. And because there are no longer established and agreed upon rules for any type of interaction, all interaction is thereby organized through a lens of acute individualism; making all communication and decision making transactional.

            During the pandemic lockdown, this anomic period was fueled by inherent racism and misogyny that we’ve established in the US since its founding. There was a class divide that caused the experiences of white-collar workers to be able to weather the lockdown easier than others whose jobs could not be completed from home. People of color were disproportionally a part of the workforce that were identified as essential workers (from nurses and doctors to food service workers), and because women are more likely to be members of the part time service industry, they too were unfairly put on the front lines of labor. This was especially significant because we did not have a working vaccine at the time. This period of normlessness also fueled conspiracy theories about bleach, and horse dewormer; which was moving people away from necessary behavioral change and into fear induced apathy.

            This anomie that we felt was also politically weaponized as the mask mandates and lockdown orders came about. The inability for some to accept that this was happening became a point of political manipulation to pry apart social solidarity, and for the Trump administration at the time to maintain power. In addition to peddling the conspiracy theories mentioned above, Trump stated that he believed it would just go away. He actively attempted to gaslight the American people into believing that COVID wasn’t serious. He defied his own mask mandate orders, repeatedly not wearing a mask or taking off the mask in public. This caused several of his supporters to protest the mandates with their guns in their local cities. Trump hid his own infection with COVID, twice. Once during the first presidential debate with opponent Joe Biden, and again during the confirmation announcement of Amy Comey Barrett; thinking that he’d seem weak if he was wearing a mask or taking his health seriously.  The bungling of the COVID-19 responses which contributed to over 1 million American’s dead, was the major factor that cost Trump the election in 2020.         

Ducournau embraces this anomic vibe and uses the unrest witnessed during these two historical crises (HIV/AIDS and COVID) as a backdrop; and unspoken tension that exists in every scene. There are displays of fear and panic that are based in entrenched bigotry but thinly obfuscated as legitimate individual concern. When Alpha confronts the boy she’s seeing about their similar tattoos, he sheepishly admits that he received his tattoo right after her; the same night, with the same needle. When Alpha asks why he did not speak up when he saw that she was being bullied, he demures, indicating that he did not want their classmate’s ire to fall on him.  Here, Ducournau illustrates the hollow rationalization of dehumanization justified by a medical crisis that both reinforces the narcissistic urge of self-preservation, and a desire for social acceptance. Rather than stand in solidarity with Alpha, he allowed peer group socialization to guide his choices and behavior. Granted, during this time of middle school, the social pressure to conform to your peer /friend group is considerably gargantuan. Nevertheless, it was clear through his depiction, and how he treated Alpha, that his caginess around Alpha’s potential illness wasn’t just to protect himself from social ridicule, but to also gain sexual favors from Alpha (kissing in bathrooms and nearly having intercourse in his bedroom).

Mini rant: How Child sexualization on screen contributes to pedophilia

 As an aside: much in the same way I am hard pressed to know the social and political intention of a piece of pop culture because I do not know how that culture is going to be consumed, so too do I bristle at the inclusion of childhood sexuality in coming-of-age films. Especially when they are explicit or contain nakedness of any kind. I question both the purpose and the audience. How does it serve the story, and what is the overall point? Who does this service? Because it doesn’t seem like it is serving the story, the audience, or the actors involved.

I directly questioned the depiction of child sexual behavior in my previous essay on Water Lillies by Celine Sciamma back in 2024. Like Sciamma, Ducournau cast an adult actress to play younger (Melissa Boros was 19 playing Alpha at 13), and while Ducournau did not personally sexualize her main lead, as Sciamma did in her film, she did have a significant development gap between the actor and the age she was portraying. Considering the wide variance in development among girls, there is some authenticity to a “more mature” looking 13-year-old. Yet, to depict them as being in intimate scenarios when they are depicted by someone older, increases the likelihood of their sexualization by the audience and contributes to the normalization of pedophilia.

Regardless of sexuality being a legitimate part of the coming-of-age story, there is a gulf of a difference between including the turmoil of rising sexual feelings and the depiction of sex and nudity amongst characters that are underage. The former is valid, while the latter is exploitatively pedophilic.  It continues the “adultification” of girls on screen and contributes to the sexual objectification of girls in public, which happens so early and with such frequency as it does, that it doesn’t need assistance from the cinema.  

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS            

The sociological question that Ducournau asks, outside of the allegorical representation of historic medical crises, is the value and interpersonal impacts of generational grief. What does it mean when an individual can’t let go, or someone cannot get past the worst time of their life? Narratively, this is unique as few films explore the failings of a protagonist to find solace or redemption. The primary reason being that people have been conditioned through generations of storytelling to value character arcs that show growth and moving past that point of pain. Generally, it is desirable to see characters that are not in the same place at the end of a story as they were at the beginning. This change shows both acknowledgement of, and a reward for, the investment of time the audience puts into watching the story unfold. It minimizes disappointment. Rare are films that show characters with an inability to grow. When they are depicted, it is usually a moral failing, a cautionary tale. It is something to learn from, so that unlike these characters, audience members can move on; and hold on to hope for something better. However, this messaging becomes muddled with the realities of grief and the way that people engage with it, and the societal expectation of grief and its processes. Few realize that grief is a social fact.

 Grief as a Social Fact

A social fact is clearly defined as any way of acting that is fixed or not, capable of exerting over an individual an external constraint or that which is generated over the whole of a given society whist having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations (Durkheim 1982:59)

   A social fact has three components to it:

1.       Externality: to exist outside of something (prior or outside of the individual) something that we learn through the process of socialization (e.g. language)

2.       Constraint: puts forth a compelling force or coercive power over individuals. It sets limits and constraints on people

3.       Generality: This is something that is widespread that has been deeply rooted in the cultural norms of a group or society, to the point that they are seen as natural.

Grief is an emotion that is felt by a variety of living creatures; not just humans. It exists outside of any one person, even though every person can experience it. Grief continues even if people don’t. Ironically, it is the emotional vacuum experienced after the loss of someone else that propels grief amongst a populace. Grief exists within the individual, and amongst the people. Both inside and outside the person. Externality. Those that have experienced grief understand how it may manifest as psychological and social shackles that keep individuals inert. The cinematic language used to explain grief is one of a barrier. It is consistently manifested as a hindrance; keeping something or someone from “moving on”. That “moving on” is also always presented as something good. This once again frames progress as linear and positive; because it is assumed, where you are, is never where you want to stay. Especially in narrative storytelling, grief is an albatross that must be cast off. Constraint. Since all humans and many nonhumans experience grief, it is an emotion that is ritualistically self-generating within our society. The experience of grief is not novel or unexpected, it is nuanced to the social, cultural and historical context in which it is experienced. We create rituals as a method to “process” our grief. Funerals and other collective experiences around death are not for the corpse, but for the collective conscience. It is a natural part of understanding life. Generality. Yet just because grief can be understood as a social fact, does not mean that its inevitability is how grief is neither conditioned nor socially experienced.

Socially, grief is understood through a capitalist lens. It is a barrier that one must overcome or circumvent to have “grown”. This is measured by our ability to look back on that time of grief and value it for allowing us to be where we are in the present. We understand this in very pro-capitalist economic terms: the process of grief, our progress from it, and the growth or “profit” from experiencing it. In this, grief is transactional. This understanding of grief is reinforced through cinema.

In cinema, grief is mainly played as a constraint. It is the source of tension and conflict from which the filmmakers can create drama, stakes, and thus, audience investment (again a capitalist frame). Therefore, to see a return on that investment, the conflict must be resolved, the constraint removed, evaded or abated. Unfortunately, the consumption of these types of stories through this lens conditions us through the process of socialization to define grief as being fundamentally temporary (again, framed as a process) its resolution an inevitability. Additionally, that conclusion is reached with fundamental ease and speed (about the length of a feature film). While, conceptually, we understand that is not how the actual experience of grief works (emotional experiences in humans tend to exist nonlinearly), it creates a social expectation in individuals, organizations, and the social institutions in which we live, to exist as such.

 The United States being a capitalist society, we’ve framed our social and institutional interactions through the economic language of profit to be transitory and transactional. Thus, the Marxian notion of commodification provides an understanding that everything in human life, even the experiences of our emotions, can be bought, sold, traded or exchanged; grief included. Grief then becomes commodified. Usually manifesting in the form of self-help books with a variety of coping strategies, self-care routines, pharmacology and therapies. Access to these manifestations is not all equally distributed, with some groups, usually those with greater wealth, being able to acquire more than those who do not. Regardless, what often is overlooked is that there is always a societal time limit to grief.

In a capitalist system like the US, grief is assigned a value and is considered a commodified resource. The misery of others is publicly traded, and their recovery is profited from. It is cyclical as opposed to perpetually linear. This is contradictory to the common assumption that sustained grief should be desired for profit. Epitomized by the notion that therapy is never over. The rationalization being that there is always something about yourself that you need to work on (a notion that flies in the face of a therapeutic understanding based on having goals that you want to achieve; and once achieved, the therapy ends). Thus, a time limit to grief seems anti-capitalistic…until you factor in productivity.

Capitalism is an economic system that dehumanizes. It is amoral and apathetic. It does not care about the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of its workers. Thus, the arresting power of grief, halts productivity. The work never stops because the profit cannot abide a limit (Marx 1993). Therefore, there are constraints put on grief. No matter how generous the healthcare plan, no matter how understanding your boss, emotionally supportive coworkers, family and friends are, there is a variety of societal limits to grief’s expression.

Grief is allowed to be intense at the outset, with strong emotional support and a variety of empathetic gestures. But the greater the temporal distance from the grief causing event, the quicker the societal acceptance and behavioral latitude evaporates; replaced by an expectation to move past it and become productive again. Once that time is reached, grief is perceived as an individual and moral failing. Characterizing the person as broken if they cannot get back to their previous productive self. Criticized as being “stuck in the past.”

This understanding of the social conditions of grief is taught through the consumption of cinema. As we engage with a plethora of stories that champion the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity, and to not succumb to trauma, nor the grief and loneliness that accompanies it. We reinforce the social condition that grief is not only a social fact, and a normal part of existence, but as something that we inevitably have to overcome multiple times throughout our lives in order to simply exist within society. We also learn that shame, ridicule and ostracization follows those who cannot defeat grief. This results in people masking and self-medicating their grief. They realize that so long as you are still able to participate in the system, you are left alone (to “not be ok”). You are allowed to be mentally and emotionally broken so long as you are undisruptively productive. Thus, we are given several cinematic depictions of functioning broken people. If they do not improve by the time credits roll, they learn to mask convincingly enough to allow the audience to assume a happy ending; even when that may betray the context of the film itself.  Film in this context then becomes one way in which the acceptable image of grief is laundered. It hides the limits of grief within a capitalist society, creating a culture that sees grief as an aberration, and those that can’t control it, as failures. Ducournau’s Alpha is an exception.

In Alpha, grief is cinematically manifested in the character of Uncle Amin. The audience is introduced to Amin as an intrusion into the lives of Alpha and her mother.  Alpha is noticeably concerned, considering that she has no recollection of who he is at first introduction (occupying her room). This is despite his protests that they know each other quite well, and she was just too young to remember. As her mother returns home, she is uncharacteristically accommodating to her brother whom, as we see in flashbacks, is a drug addict. On numerous occasions, the film shows Alpha’s mother resuscitating him after various overdoses. A flashback to when Alpha was five, reveals that Amin had contracted the virus. He then decides to take Alpha to buy drugs so he can overdose and die on his own terms. When Alpha’s mom catches him in the act, she resigns to assisting him. But as he passes out, Alpha’s mother revives him again, unable to let him go. Eventually, Amin, after a painfully long process, succumbs to the disease and is turned into a marble statue.

Since the film is told in overlapping flashbacks, the story moves linearly but jumps between past and present towards the same event (the inciting incident). Ducournau builds to the moment that traumatized both mother and daughter: their collective assistance in Amin’s attempted suicide. Alpha’s mom administering the lethal dose and Alpha’s promise to make sure Amin doesn’t wake up. This schism results in his haunting of them; a manifestation of their unresolved grief. The mother, unable to let go of her brother, and the feelings of failure from Alpha for not being able to teach her mother to let go. This culminates at the end of the film when Alpha declares that Uncle Amin can’t be with them anymore. At films end, Alpha looks on as her mother and Uncle begin to walk toward the house. Suddenly, the spirit of Amin crumbles, carried off by the wind. Her mother screams, left with nothing but anguish.

A more hopeful interpretation of this final scene is that it is a turning point in the relationship between Alpha and her mother, that they are no longer haunted by the specter of their dead loved one. However, there has been nothing to suggest that growth in any of the preceding scenes. Alpha’s recovery of her lost memories and declaration to overcome grief has no practical weight to it. Given the context of the entire film that proceeded it, it is more likely that this is the start of another grief cycle for Alpha’s mother. Stuck resurrecting the memory of her brother in her own mind because she could not bring him back to life. Grief is a social fact, and for some, it becomes the only truth.

    

CONCLUSION

            Alpha is a film that competently provides a historical allegory for the HIV/AIDS crisis with Ducournau’s wonderful body-horrific flare. Yet, the film seems like an allegory in search of a story. The metaphors were so bluntly heavy handed that the narrative wasn’t cohesively held together in the same way as her previous work. However, where this film shines is in its meditation on grief and its circumventive subversion of audience expectations. We expect the narrative arc to the expiration of grief, the conquering of loss and a rebounding acceptance of life. Instead, this film shows us that somethings aren’t overcome, they are adapted to and lived with. An infrequent lesson that is as equally important as its rosier alternative.  

 

REFERENCES

Durkheim, Emile 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method and selected text on Sociology and its Method. New York: The Free Press  

Halkitis, Perry N. 2019 “The Stonewall Riots, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Public’s Health” in The American Journal of Public Health 109(6):pp 851–852. Retrieved on 4/18/26 Retrieved at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6507988/

Marx, Karl 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy New York: Penguin Classics     

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[1]  Some of us were children. Many of us had the privilege to be kept ignorant of both the severity and the horrors of death the disease brought at the time

The Films of Karyn Kusama: Jennifer's Body

 

            

              The third film in my retrospective on the films of Karyn Kusama is the late blooming horror classic Jennifer’s Body. Misunderstood, underrepresented and overlooked, this 2009 film was ahead of its time, and the culture at large. The film presents gender and sexuality in a way that we’ve barely touched on, outside of vague indie dramas, in the near 15 years since its release. Even fewer, are the films that are marketed to mass audiences and open wide as this film did. This paper is an exploration of the historical revulsion of the film upon its release, and its reconsideration a decade later, as well as an analysis of the film’s broadly stroked gendered and sexual themes that become more intricately detailed upon further and closer examination.

 

PLOT

            High School friends Anita and Jennifer have been inseparable since childhood. Jennifer, the outgoing aggressive bombshell, is the gravitational force in their relationship, while the diminutive Anita, who goes by the descriptive, albeit narratively deceptive, “Needy”[1], sits comfortably in her orbit. But when Jennifer gets lured away after a bar fire and improperly sacrificed to Satan for an Emo Glam Rock Band’s desire for fame and fortune, Anita “Needs” to take care of what remains, a demon succubus, inside her best friend.  

 

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            Production

            Jennifer’s Body marked the sophomore film for writer/producer Diablo Cody and their second collaboration with Producer Jason Reitman after their smash hit, Juno. Cody wanted to both pay homage to, and subvert, a lot of the Horror tropes of the era by centering the narrative around girls and their friendships, ultimately turning the genre into a double entendre.

While not confirmed, Cody seemed to draw inspiration for Jennifer’s sacrifice from the real-life murder of Elyse Pahler who in 1996 was lured from her home in California and killed as a part of a Satanic ritual; all for the Metal Band Hatred to be granted “The Craziness and Go Professional”. Once captured, the three members of the band pleaded “no contest” and are each serving life sentences in three separate penitentiaries across California. One of these men was denied Parole in 2021 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the other two have upcoming parole hirings in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Feeling a lack of Justice, The Pahler Family lashed out at the band Slayer, believing that their music and lyrics promoted murder and violence, which in their mind, led to the death of their daughter. All civil court cases were dismissed.      

The script for Jennifer’s Body was written in 2006 at the same time as Juno, but because of the latter’s success, the second script by Diablo Cody was quickly put on the list of the “most anticipated” unmade scripts of that year. Reitman was initially set to direct, given his history with Cody, but realizing his vision wasn’t the right fit, began shopping for directors. Kusama came on in the early months of 2008, drawn to the project by the script and its overall themes, “a fairytale gone psycho”, and was present during the additional drafts of the script that zeroed in and highlighted its feminist messaging. Both Cody and Kusama were adamant in wanting the story to remain about female friendships and write these horror roles that [ so rarely] service women.  While Cody’s popularity assured that this script would be produced, the reactionary nature of the Hollywood industry, ultimately guaranteed that the studio, in this case 20^th Century Fox, would not understand it.   

             The studio ignorance of this film festered. Only seeing through the white male gaze of standard Hollywood pictures, Producers believed this film to be a riff on the typical sex comedy in the vein of (what would eventually become) National Lampoon’s trademark in the early 2000’s, a sort of American Pie with a Succubus. Therefore, they hired an all-male marketing team who focused their attention on capturing young white men, by using their promotional budget to sexualize Megan Fox at the center of its advertising. Billboards, posters, one sheets, and trailer editors all leaned in on the hyper sexualized image of Megan Fox cultivated by the Studio in order to get men into the theater with the promise of her naked body. According to Kusama, this crack marketing team even had the deplorable idea that Fox should do live chats for the film on Amateur Porn sites. This failure at the marketing ultimately poisoned the public well of goodwill for the film. Thus, audiences and critics at the time did not know exactly what the film was, nor what it was trying to say; their expectations crashing upon the rocky shores of the film’s actual messages. This incongruity left many (typically male) audience members and critics feeling duped, leading to them unfairly criticizing the film, because of its marketing tactics.

            Reception

            The initial reviews of the film which were mixed but leaning towards terrible, typically cited the script and direction as being at fault rather than the performances. Yet, due to the mismanaged marketing, praise for the performances rarely went beyond the physical, with one review stating: “Forget Jennifer’s Body. This is all about Megan’s Body”. Several other reviews lambasted the film for its “lack of fun” or stated that it was a film that was “pretty to look at” but “without substance.” or calling the directing amateurish and the writing a “disappointment from an Oscar winner” (meaning Cody). Many critics felt that Cody was “trying too hard” to match her success with Juno while others thought the film was too sexual, or conversely, not sexual enough (which might have been code for not enough nudity, meaning they didn’t get to see Megan Fox naked). While others just saw the finished product as trashy B movie schlock.  

It is difficult to truss out whether these first negative reviews, were conceivably led a stray by the piss poor marketing team, or if it’s a representation of the cultural subtext of the patriarchy. Many of these negative reviews (typically, but not all from men) read like the masculine gatekeeping of a genre. The keyboard warriors and early internet trolls that believe that a female led and directed film, is by its very creation, subpar. They are then inclined, nay, self-empowered, emboldened, even entitled, to have their voice be heard and to “put these women in their place.” These outbursts being tantamount to these men throwing a toddler’s tantrum for the film not being what they wanted or expected. These negative reviews shaped a generation’s opinion on this film. For a decade, anytime anyone would suggest watching it, the inevitable refrain would be: “Oh I heard its bad, isn’t it bad?” Fortunately, vindication and the valorization of Jennifer’s Body eventually came with the shifting of gender politics in the US.

 

The Emancipation of one Jennifer Check    

            Since the film’s release in 2009, US audiences have seen the embolization of a white supremacist misogyny, ever present in our history and culture, congeal, and metastasize into the living tumor that is Donald Trump. His successful run for the presidency against Hillary Clinton set off a wave of anti-immigrant, misogynistic and racist behavior and its resistance. Many people were speaking up to this tyranny that wouldn’t before; whether that be because they have finally had enough or because Trump forced them to be introspective[2] is irrelevant.  Regardless, people were beginning to have conversations about structural forms of systemic racism and sexism that were outside of academia. Yet, these conversations needed a catalytic spark to create change. History would provide two events; the response to which would further a new anti-sexism movement called #MeToo.

 The phrase “MeToo” was coined in 2005 by Tarana Burke, to illustrate the frequency and cultural ubiquity of sexual assault and violence against women. Burke defined the tactic that would eventually become the movement’s mission statement:

 “to empower sexually assaulted people (especially young and vulnerable women of color) through empathy, solidarity, and strength in numbers, by visibly demonstrating how many have experienced sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.”

While the movement started in 2005 it was not until 12 years later that it would gain both traction and a voice. The first event that initiated the Me-Too movement was the New York Times expose on the sex crimes of Miramax producer Harvey Weinstein, receiving over 100 different accusations including many from the Hollywood elite. The #MeToo began trending on social media, giving many who were unaware (mostly men) their first glimpse at the enormity of the problem of sexual assault and sexual violence; ultimately contributing to Weinstein’s unlikely arrest and surprising conviction.  

The second event that solidified the movement was the appointment of an anthropomorphized can of Papts Blue Ribbon to the Supreme Court through Brett Kavanaugh; regardless of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about being allegedly assaulted by Kavanaugh while in college. Veterans of the fight against sexism and the newly “woke” watched as the systemic patriarchy rallied around Kavanaugh and protected him and his reputation with all of the power at their disposal.   

            According to Constance Grady (2018) it is among the backdrop of the #MeToo Movement that Jennifer’s Body gets its reconsideration and recompence.

 “In a post-#MeToo world, the implications of this storyline look uncomfortably familiar. It’s the story of a group of powerful men sacrificing a girl’s body on the altar of their own professional advancement — and it’s also the story of them using her torment as a bonding activity.”

            Several feminist and gender scholars have discussed at length the way that the violation of women by men is used as a mechanism for male group cohesion (Sanday 1984, Kimmel 2008). The members of Low Shoulder, quip, joke and sing just before murdering Jennifer. Not only is this a way to decompress the situation from its immensity, allowing them to either kill her or be complacent to it, but their laughter illustrates more broadly the way that a lot of men in their friendship circles hide from dangerous or uncomfortable situations. They believe that if they can laugh about a situation then the gravity of what they have done is dissipated (Orenstein 2020).  

In the Me-Too era, Jennifer’s Body can also be framed as a rape revenge fantasy, a reclamation of a woman’s body after an assault. Living in the Rape Culture which defines sexuality as violent and minimizes sexual assault by gaslighting women into silence, how many assault stories end like Jennifer’s: bloodied, near catatonic, and looking for comfort in the presence and safety of a best friend? What the public has learned is that the story of what happens to Jennifer’s body, could have happened to anybody. To that end, the only criticism I have of how this film handles the assault is that it reinforces the tired trope that violence (typically sexual violence) is the catalyst for Jennifer becoming powerful. Regardless of what she eventually does with that power, it still has its origin in male violence against her, which she then turns on others.

In 2023, Jennifer’s story, or at least the beginnings of it, are all too familiar. This reframing transforms the film from the marketed sex fantasy for men, to a revenge fantasy for women and the importance, and complexity of female friendships. The broader (male) society can now look at the film and rather than be distracted by the “male gazey hotness of Megan Fox” put forth by the marketing, they can recognize the allegorical gender messages the film always portended but was obfuscated by the patriarchal and misogynistic industry standards of Hollywood. Many terribly sexist films have been tacitly accepted through the socio-cultural hand waving of “it was a product of the times.” The speech being used as a shield against any intricate investigation through a more modern/less forgiving lens. Yet, films like Jennifer’s Body become richer within the present context. While the cynically glib part of me wants to flippantly exclaim that “the world had to get bad enough in order to appreciate the film” But part of the point of the #MeToo Movement is that it was always like this, we’ve now decided to see it…for a while.    

        

“You’re Killing people.” “No, I’m killing Boys.”

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

The social analysis of Cody and Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body developed in part along the same timeline as the film’s reclamation. While there have always been supporters, the film surviving on its cult status, the revivification of the love story between Anita and Jennifer in the public discourse began with a Feminist theoretical reading of the film. Through this lens, Jennifer’s Body becomes a subversive and Feminist treatise on female social expectations, anger, and friendships, while providing a space for the exploration of bisexuality, something that is still radical today.

Upending The Patriarchal Power of men

Part of the amenable power of Jennifer’s Body is in its ability to shine a lens on the gendered expectations and the fragile nature of masculinity within the patriarchy. To say masculinity is fragile means that the veneer of manhood is easily broken because the acceptable criterion for masculinity is so narrow and specific, often surrounding violence, being tough, numerous sexual conquests, as well as protection, provision, and alcohol consumption, that a person’s masculine presentation can be obliterated with a simple question or a small behavioral slip. Say the “wrong” thing, order the “wrong” drink, where the “wrong” clothes and you leave yourself open to ridicule. Because the tenuous nature of masculinity is known, masculinity needs to be reaffirmed/solidified in (nearly) every social situation. Jennifer’s Body highlights the fact that boys and men are not the only ones that learn these masculine rules, girls do too and use them to glean power (In Jennifer’s case, their lifeforce) from them. Yet, because she is working within the confines of already established gender norms, exploiting them, rather than breaking them, she goes undetected.

  In the film, although Jennifer is always the last person to be seen with the victims, she is never suspected. The tacit implication being that it is unthinkable that a girl/woman could be the killer, especially given the horrifically gory cannibalistic nature of the crimes. This gendered invisibility allows her to hunt without interruption. Part of Jennifer’s stalking process is playing on the socially constructed gender norms that police both men and women’s bodies. These boys willfully go with Jennifer, or are lured by her, to secluded locations so that she can feed. They do not fear her, even when the context of the situation screams danger, because she is a girl. And still, they persist into danger because of the promise of sex, because of the promise of “Jennifer’s Body.”

    The scene that clearly articulates this exploitation of fragile Masculinity is when Colin (Kyle Gallner) is driving to a supposed “date” with Jennifer. As he is driving, he notices that the streets get less populated, homes get darker, and eventually everything looks abandoned. As he approaches the house where he is supposed to meet Jennifer, he knows that at the very least, this seems like a prank (and at worse he is in danger). Yet, he continues into the house because of the allure of uncertainty, the possibility of Jennifer, and the masculine gender police of his fellow men, that will mercilessly ridicule him for leaving.  Jennifer weaponizes fragile masculinity and she wields it with perfect precision.    

The filmmaking intention of scenes like the one above is to upend the trope of women dying in horror movies. While the film is successful, to that end, it also goes further and makes all the male characters utterly faceless and disposable, only identified by their particular aesthetic (jackets, piercings, hairstyles etc.) much like female gendered tropes in traditional horror movies.  The subversive thing about Jennifer’s Body is that the boys and men in this film are one-dimensional mechanisms by which the relationship between Jennifer and “Needy” play out; they are a function by which the relational dynamics of the principal characters are explored.

 

“Do You have a Tampon? I thought you might be plugging.”

           

“Needy” and Jennifer: Best Frenemies Forever  

 At first glance, and in the opening scene, Jennifer and “Needy” are supposed to embody a gaggle of female friendship tropes. Jennifer is “the hot girl” and Anita is “the nerdy best friend”; each identified with specific hairstyles, clothing, and make-up. The filmmakers even go so far as to resurrect the 90’s trope of making an attractive girl seem ugly by putting Amanda Seyfried behind a pair of glasses and tying her hair back. This is even called out early in the film after Jennifer tells “Needy” to “Wear something cute.” “Needy” understands exactly what that means. Her proceeding explanation is so razor thin specific that she only needs to try on a few outfits/ combinations that fit the criteria.

Woven into the character tropes of “Needy” and Jennifer is an exploration of female relational aggression (Simmons 2002). Because direct aggression is often coded as masculine, women have been socialized to express their anger in subtle indirect ways. This keeps them from seeming overtly hostile, and maintaining a “good girl” image, and therefore not sanctioned. This anger manifests through the weaponizing of relationships and using the practices of group exclusion, rumor spreading, and name calling (Simmons 2002).  A lot of the aggression that “Needy” and Jennifer feel for each other is expressed through their interactions with other people. Jennifer expertly pits “Needy” against others (mostly Chip) in order to make “Needy” choose Jennifer; effectively sabotaging her other relationships so that they only belong to each other.   

      

            Jennifer and “Needy’s” Bisexual Journey

            Jennifer and Anita’s love story begins in a sandbox when they were children (Sandbox love never dies). Throughout the film, that bond is tweaked and stretched the way a lot of young love develops, through flirtation and experimentation. Jennifer and “Needy” are shown engaging in playful, semi aggressive shoving early in the film which can often be a precursor to a sexual encounter. Moreover, when Jennifer shows up in “Needy’s” bed in a t-shirt, underwear, and leggings, Jennifer mentions that “[She] found her way back to [Needy]” and passively mentions that they used to play “boyfriend and girlfriend”. In these moments, their love, desire, and passion for each other is palpable; especially for “Needy”. For Jennifer, because she is always sexually confident, it is in her quiet caring, and unwillingness to harm “Needy”, that shows her tenderness and love.  While these ideas were originally assumed by critics to be solely for and about the heterosexual male audience, creating titillation for the male gaze, what Jennifer and “Needy” display here is a clear presentation of Adrianne Rich’s “Lesbian Existence”    

In a previous essay I provided an articulation of Rich’s main point and context that is valid in Understanding the Sexual Politics of Jennifer’s Body

 

“Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women. But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act of resistance. It has of course included role playing, self-hatred, breakdown, alcoholism, suicide, and intrawoman violence; we romanticize at our peril what it means to love and act against the grain, and under heavy penalties; and lesbian existence has been lived (unlike, say, Jewish or Catholic existence) without access to any knowledge of a tradition, a continuity, a social underpinning. The destruction of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping heterosexuality compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our knowledge is joy, sensuality, courage, and community, as well as guilt, self-betrayal, and pain”

As the term "lesbian" has been held to limiting, clinical associations in its patriarchal definition, female friendship and comradeship have been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting the erotic itself. But as we deepen and broaden the range of what we define as lesbian existence, as we delineate a lesbian continuum, we begin to discover the erotic in female terms: as that which is unconfined to any single part of the body or solely to the body itself, as an energy not only diffuse but, as Audre Lorde has described it, omnipresent in "the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic," and in the sharing of work; as the empowering joy which "makes us less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial[7]

 

Rich identifies in this stitched together passage, (as in the article as a whole) that in a patriarchal system women are taught to see other women as a source of contention and competition for male attention (Thus making heterosexuality compulsory through socialized behaviors, reinforced by rewards from social structural institutions (Marriage, family, Military economy etc.)), and denying the reality of the power women have among and with each other by placing undue emphasis on the type and nature of a relationship rather than what that relationship provides for the individuals involved. Thus, women are socially trained through compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal oppression that the most important relationships that they have are with men, and that all other relationships are secondary within this structure.

            We see this play out in Jennifer’s Body in the way that “Needy” only engages in sexual contact with her boyfriend, Chip, because she feels threatened by Jennifer (contention and competition for male attention) “Needy” never initiates romantic or sexual contact with him that isn’t motivated by Jennifer’s presence or her mentioning. Consistent to that point, Jennifer’s pursuit of Chip is in service of affecting her relationship with “Needy”

Additionally, Amanda Seyfried and Johnny Simmons (“Needy” and Chip respectively) have nonexistent on-screen chemistry. When Chip is first introduced in “Needy’s” room, in the context of the scene, the audience could just as easily infer that Chip is her brother rather than her boyfriend. This is solidified when you juxtapose “Needy’s” participation in her sexual interactions with both Chip and Jennifer. With Chip, “Needy” is in the passive receiving missionary position with little to no eye contact with her partner (to which Chip makes no notice or care for).  Instead, it is clear in the context of the scene that she is thinking about/linked with Jennifer. Conversely, later in the film, after Jennifer initiates their kiss, it is “Needy” that becomes desirably aggressive towards Jennifer, overcome with a passionate hunger neither she, nor the audience, have seen from her before.

In the end, the confluence of Jennifer and “Needy’s” relationship is a near perfect distillation of Rich’s argument for the power of “The Lesbian existence”. They do not define themselves by the patriarchal definition of lesbian, but instead define the erotic in feminine terms, thereby allowing for the creation of a “lesbian continuum” which includes their Bisexuality. Carmen Maria Machado (2022) reinforces this in the way that they deconstruct the final confrontation between Jennifer and “Needy”:

When Needy eventually kills Jennifer, she does it facing her, straddling her; this is how Jennifer’s mother finds them, compromised in Jennifer’s canopy bed.

The scene is shot less like a death scene and more like teens being caught in a romantic entanglement. The culmination of the fight has the subtext of mild sex play, and when the final blow is struck, it plays out like a sexual climax rather than a death. This seems intentional considering that orgasms have been historically referred to as “the little death” and acts as a satisfying narrative metaphor for the pinnacle of their relationship. To further this point, the reaction of Jennifer’s mother is first one of surprise in seeing “Needy” intimately atop her daughter, and her reaction to Jennifer’s (dead) body is one of sorrowful disappointment rather than anger which is also consistent in many “coming out” stories.

            Machado (2022) goes on to identify the Bisexual diversity through “Needy” and Jennifer’s characters, believing that if Jennifer were not to be invaded by Satan, that she would have turned out to be a bisexual that is primarily lesbian in practice and “Needy” as a bisexual that also consistently dates men. While I believe there is just as much evidence for the opposite given “Needy’s” desert of chemistry with her Gaslighting jackass of a boyfriend; it’s important to understand that stories of sexuality, actual, non-romanticized versions are complicated and messy especially around the subject of sexual Identity…and “such little grace is given to the perfect messiness of desire.” (Machado 2022:3)

            Thus, the bisexual queerness of Jennifer and “Needy’s” love story is complex and multifaceted; set in direct opposition to the common bisexual stories we are subjected to in our “post-modern” culture. The bisexual identity is less accepted and vilified on both sides of the sexuality binary, with many people (on both sides) believing that the bisexuality identity is a layover rather than a destination. This is further complicated by the way the heteronormative structure allows for “spaces of experimentation” usually college, where fluid sexual identities are more accepted. Granted, many of these spaces were created still under the male gaze and women in sexual congress with other women has been commodified by heterosexual men for their own pleasure. But regardless of intention and motivation, women are allowed to sexually experiment more openly in these spaces and that has the potential to allow for greater sexual diversity beyond the binary. Therefore, we need more complex messy stories like Jennifer and Needy’s because not everything is blissfully explicit and wonderfully clean.  

Machado (2022) sums this up nicely in a recent interview:

 People want queer representation to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be perfect — and also, people have different ideas about what makes something perfect. And there is a deliciousness in subtext and uncertainty… But also, the standards are so high. Subtext is really fun! I feel like a lot of younger people are like, “If it’s not explicit, it’s not worth it.” And I’m like, “Eat your vegetables!”

 

CONCLUSION

Jennifer’s Body is a wonderfully schlocky B movie horror feminist cult classic. It was undercut by the marketing team and sold to the group that would hate it the most; under the guise that the objectification of Megan Fox would continue in the service of the white male gaze. Instead, what many of these men received was a understanding of their minimal importance in the lives of girls and women when compared to the complexity of female friendships. Upset, they decided to lash out at the film for making them face this realization rather than be introspective about their relationships and how they treat women. In a recent court ruling, the US courts have determined that individuals can sue production companies over the validity of their movie trailers. Meaning that if something that is presented as significant in the trailers does not make it into the final film, that could be grounds for a lawsuit. If this was precedence in 2009, how quickly does anyone think these butthurt, dude-bros. would sue the studio for not being this films target audience, feeling a sense of entitlement to ogle at Megan Fox’s fully nude body. One of the key aspects of denial is deflection. These men do not want to recognize that the power of “Jennifer’s Body” has nothing to do with them, and that irrelevance is the harshest weapon against the misogynistic patriarchy.

 

REFERENCES

   Grady, Constance (2018)  “How Jennifer’s Body went from a flop in 2009 to a feminist cult classic today The critical reevaluation of Jennifer’s Body, explained” Retrieved at https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/31/18037996/jennifers-body-flop-cult-classic-feminist-horror Retrieved on 12/30/2022

 

  Kimmel, Micheal (2008) Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men New York: Harper Collins

 

Machado, Carmen Maria (2022) “ Both Ways” In It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror Retrieved at https://www.autostraddle.com/in-queer-horror-anthology-it-came-from-the-closet-carmen-maria-machado-considers-jennifers-body/ Retrieved on 12/30/2022

 

Orenstein, Peggy (2020) Boys and Sex: Young men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity New York: Harper Collins

 

 Rich, Adrianne (1980) “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence” In Women, Sexand Sexuality 5(4) Chicago University Press Retrieved at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173834 retrieved on 12/22/22.

 

  Sanday, Peggy Reeves (1984). Fraternity Gang Rape New York: New York University Press.

 

Simmons, Rachel K. (2002) Odd Girl Out: The hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls New York: Harcourt   

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[1] After my rewatch of this film, I am convinced that the nickname of “Needy” was something that Jennifer came up with (a constant subtle jab) and Anita accepted it to maintain a relationship with Jennifer

[2] It is important to keep in mind that during this many White men who openly and vocally came out against Donald Trump did so under the guise of using Trump’s openly inflammatory and blatantly discriminatory statements to distance themselves from their own levels of racism and sexism. Because compared to Trump, their level of Misogyny seems quaint. May people justifying their actions by saying “At least I am not that bad”