Good article on Vice on how Jennifer's Body would resonate better today, in the #MeToo era.
fire and slut-shame me if old
The attack on Jennifer is one of the film's most powerful and uncomfortable scenes. There's no sexual assault, but the imagery is clear. Even if it wasn't, Jennifer meekly asks the members of Low Shoulder if they're rapists once she notices something isn't right in their tour van. What follows is the sacrifice of Jennifer by a group of men who are casual and practiced, cracking jokes and singing songs as Jennifer cries and begs for mercy. It's chilling and should stand out to anyone watching what has otherwise been a darkly funny movie so far. If Ebert's reading is the norm, no wonder Jennifer's Body barely registered.
That scene is probably the definitive moment that unlocks everything Cody and Kusama are up to, offering what amounts to a rape/revenge narrative, only the attackers get off scott free. They even profit off of their behaviour by becoming the symbols of the Devil's Kettle tragedy and the town's enduring spirit. This is a dark bit of satire that reads very differently in 2018, as people like Louis C.K., Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose plan their comebacks after years of success on the backs of those they abused.
Jennifer's Body is similarly saying something quite a bit more profound than "high school is hell" (or "hell is a teenage girl," in the words of Needy), which is that there are no perfect victims. And that doesn't matter. A popular mean girl in a backwater town, virginal or not, drunk or not, dressed suggestively or not, shouldn't be abducted and assaulted.
That might be an obvious message, but it's far more resonant today, while these kinds of questions are actively being debated. If that seems hyperbolic, consider that teen girls everywhere in America were told earlier this month by their president and elected senators that whatever their male peers do to them in their youth doesn't really matter. That was the clear message as they literally laughed off serious decades-old allegations against now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
That Jennifer's Body offers a moral with this kind of weight is meaningful, and that it manages this without any overt moralizing is radical.
fire and slut-shame me if old
