The Second Life of Jennifer’s Body
Written by Silvana Smith
The cult classic 2009 film, Jennifer’s Body, was definitely a sign of the times. The film, starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox, followed two high school girls after one of them becomes possessed by a boy-eating demon after being kidnapped by a boy band. Equipped with low rise jeans, the supernatural, and a killer emo soundtrack, the movie had all but everything to attract the coveted young audiences of the time. So why did it flop when it hit theaters? Despite hardly making its budget back at the box office, Jennifer's Body has enjoyed a small cult following and has recently grown a fanbase on new media platforms like tiktok and tumblr. Although nostalgia is all the rage in the 2020’s, its modern day relevance is what’s drawing in new fans. A lot of the film’s undertones and themes were a decade ahead of its time and are striking a chord with young audiences today. In a world where more scripts are written, produced, and starring women, the dark humor horror flick is finally getting the appreciation it deserves.
Written by Diablo Cody and Directed by Karyn Kusama, the creators of Jennifer’s Body had a satirical, feminist, queer vision in mind. Exploring themes of sexual assault, complex female relationships, and revenge, the film resonates with the current cultural shifts in Hollywood, like the Me Too Movement and Times Up, that critcize the sexist industry and abusive men in power. A message primed to have succeeded in today’s market, these ideas went over the heads of many audience members at the time and critics couldn’t get past surface level sex appeal. Underneath the hot cheerleader stereotype, Jennifer was a complex character that was in love with her best friend, assaulted by men she had idolized, and she used the way society sexualized her in order to get revenge. Unappreciated and overlooked by the masses, the film wasn’t palatable for the mainstream and instead found a home within niche communities online filled with the underserved young, female, and queer audiences the creators had made the film for.
Why did it take so long for the film to find its audience? Well, the cause of death for the initial release’s flop is actually shared by many cult classics that came before it; bad marketing. Even massive films like Wizard of Oz or the Princess Bride both suffered box office losses because the trailer couldn’t do the film justice. Jennifer’s Body found the same fate when its marketing campaign only tested male audiences and relied heavily on Megan Fox’s male gaze sex appeal to promote the film. Both inaccurate to the film and against the film’s core themes, executives were selling the movie to the wrong audiences against the director’s wishes and viewers were left disappointed and confused. Although young female audiences and female creators have always existed, executives and distributors did not know how to appeal to those audiences or even value their viewership at all.
So how did Jennifer’s Body achieve its modern day cult classic status, among films like The Craft, Jawbreakers, and Heathers? How do these films that never quite break into the mainstream still have a lasting cultural impact? Alongside it’s modern themes, clever script, and feminist storyline, its modern cultural relevance is also testament to the viewers it was crafted for. In the age of streaming and social media, the audience Kusama and Cody created for is more accessible and powerful than ever. Teenage girls, queer communities, and niche movies all thrive in online spaces and are becoming a commodity that can no longer go unnoticed. Young female audiences have long been undervalued by the film industry but with the marketing power of online media, marginalized audiences that usually aren't catered to hold an even larger market share than before.
These young online fan bases are a backbone of the economy whether executives realize it or not. With fan cams, tik toks, and tumblr gifs, clips and edits of older films like Jennifer’s Body are finding their way into the feeds of young audiences everyday, cutting out the need for out of touch marketing executives to promote films traditionally. Fan made and fan distributed, today’s youth are more exposed to non-mainstream content and their appreciation and modern takes on older or alternative films are given a wider platform than during the days of Facebook and Myspace.
Studios have since taken notice and are finally beginning to listen. In the decade since the film’s release, the industry is starting to see that movies with more of a cult, online following are profitable. In the past few years or so we’ve seen a ton of similar movies come back from the dead. Evidenced by the recent sequel to Zombieland or the musical debut of Heathers, more films that are popular in more alternative or underground scenes are being rebooted or revived. Even Megan Fox, who returns to the horror genre this year with her film Till Death, has given recent interviews about her love of the project and a potential sequel given its current popularity.
The continued relevance of this film is not just about the trendiness of 2000’s fashion or even its modern feminist themes but evidence that stories about, written by, and for young females and niche audiences have an enduring presence within the film industry and online media. The ability for movies like these to have such a lasting cultural impact without the help of mainstream marketing is a testament to marginalized audiences, the endurance of countercultures online, and the importance of telling their stories. Despite the hipster urge to gatekeep, movies such as these that create cultural moments deserve to be seen and celebrated as much as possible. So please, tell all your friends about Jennifer’s Body, it’s amazing.
Photo Credits
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1131734/
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/karyn-kusama-jennifers-body-marketing-misogynistic-1202026860/